It Is Crucial to Increase Ukraine’s Skies Defense Capabilities, We Are Doing Everything for That — the Address by the President

31 July 2024 – 19:56

I wish you good health, fellow Ukrainians!

Briefly about this day.

First — the defenders of our skies. Last night alone, almost ninety “Shahed” drones were shot down. This is a serious result. I thank everyone for their precision: our mobile fire groups, fighter aircraft crews, anti-aircraft gunners, electronic warfare specialists — everyone. You have done an excellent job in the skies across many of our regions. And it is also crucial to increase Ukraine’s skies defense capabilities. We are doing everything for that. And now, if such a significant result can be achieved in the defense against the “Shahed” drones, it is an obvious proof that we can be stronger both in the defense against missiles and in the defense against Russian military aircraft. Everything depends on the weapons in the hands of our warriors. We need reliable air defense systems; we need sufficient range of our weapons. Russian terror must lose every time the occupier tries to destroy life in Ukraine. And it is not just our security. It is the security of everyone neighboring Russia. We will continue to work with our partners — to persuade them, to search for what is needed for our defense in the world and supply it to Ukraine, to cooperate in the production of necessary weapons. All this is our shared defense of everyone in Europe, of everyone in the world who values life.

Second. I held a meeting with our international experts — the Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — on the preparation of new arrangements with partners. Security arrangements. And also, on the reconstruction of Ukraine. We are also preparing new bilateral security agreements and new arrangements at the multilateral level. Something that will strengthen Ukraine for sure. August is the time for preparations. Autumn is the time for results. I am grateful to everyone in the team who is involved. And now I would like to thank the United States for the assistance package that was announced earlier. Among other things, the package includes missiles for the NASAMS air defense systems, which are crucial since they are always in short supply. It also includes ammunition for HIMARS and Javelins. Thank you! We are working on ensuring the fastest possible logistics.

And the third thing, there was a report by Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi. The frontline situation. First of all, the Pokrovsk direction. Our positions, our defensive actions and our potential reinforcements. I am grateful to all those who are destroying the occupier and defending our country — defending it effectively.

Glory to Ukraine!

This war started with “Kyiv will fall within 72 hours” and with “Resistance is futile, Zelensky needs to flee to Poland ASAP.”

Now, 890 days after the day of all days, we’re still standing and seeing F-16s roar over our cities. Something that was repeatedly, persistently, and…

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 31, 2024

This war started with “Kyiv will fall within 72 hours” and with “Resistance is futile, Zelensky needs to flee to Poland ASAP.”

Now, 890 days after the day of all days, we’re still standing and seeing F-16s roar over our cities. Something that was repeatedly, persistently, and unequivocally called IMPOSSIBLE by so many.

Yet, we are where we are today. Heaven sees we’ve made such a long way and broken through so many nevers… We have friends, the people of goodwill, particularly thanks to whom this is reality.

The light prevails over the dark.

Goodnight from Ukraine, the country of good hope.

Deliveries of HIMARS, Western tanks, Storm Shadow missiles, ATACMS, and F-16s did not start a nuclear war. This is an undeniable fact proven over time. The excuses for delaying or denying these deliveries were bullshit, regardless of how some people tried to spin it.

— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) July 31, 2024

I think a lot of us would want to say our congrats to @_juicefighter_ over the fact that F-16s are now defending the skies of Ukraine.

Dude, your dream has come true. Although you’re not at the controls….

I’ll be visiting Andriy’s resting place in Kyiv tomorrow, and I think… pic.twitter.com/EnWlP6P5Fj

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 31, 2024

I think a lot of us would want to say our congrats to @_juicefighter_ over the fact that F-16s are now defending the skies of Ukraine.

Dude, your dream has come true. Although you’re not at the controls….

I’ll be visiting Andriy’s resting place in Kyiv tomorrow, and I think many of us in town will want to come over and say hi.

Kharkiv:

A Ukrainian rescuer faced the ultimate nightmare when he was called to extinguish a fire at his own home, which had been hit by an airstrike.

In the attack on Velykyi Burluk in Kharkiv region, Inna Zamesova tragically lost her life, and her 10-year-old son suffered severe burns.… pic.twitter.com/MD10tGWYj5

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) July 31, 2024

A Ukrainian rescuer faced the ultimate nightmare when he was called to extinguish a fire at his own home, which had been hit by an airstrike.

In the attack on Velykyi Burluk in Kharkiv region, Inna Zamesova tragically lost her life, and her 10-year-old son suffered severe burns.

Her husband, a firefighter, was forced to confront the horrors of war on a deeply personal level as he raced to save what was left of his family home.

The State Emergency Service has released this heartbreaking footage.

Early this morning, russian troops launched an airstrike on a residential area in a village in the Chuhuiv district of Kharkiv Oblast, resulting in the death of a 37-year-old woman and injuring her 10-year-old son. pic.twitter.com/MHNDEOr2R9

— Iryna Voichuk (@IrynaVoichuk) July 31, 2024

Russians used Orlan drones with Leer-3 systems to send mass texts, mimicking cellular base stations to trick phones into connecting.

Great story on how Russia weaponized disinformation during Kharkiv offensive in the largest war of fakes by @Max_Hunder https://t.co/0PRjPNxxaa pic.twitter.com/gGBONgrmQh

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) July 31, 2024

Reuters has the details:

KHARKIV, Ukraine, July 31 (Reuters) – In early April, some residents of Kharkiv received a series of chilling text messages from government officials telling them to flee the city before Russian forces surrounded it.

Due to the threat of enemy encirclement, we urge the civilian population of Kharkiv leave the city by April 22,” said one alert, which bore the logo of the State Emergencies Service of Ukraine and mapped out safe escape routes on a slick infographic.

It was fake. Volodymyr Tymoshko knew immediately. He’s the police chief of Kharkiv region and would have been one of the first to find out about any official evacuation plans.

“Residents started getting these notifications en masse,” the 50-year-old told Reuters as he shared a screenshot of the alert, sent as Russian troops were massing at the border 30 km away.

“This is a psychological operation, it triggers panic. What would an average citizen think when they receive such a message?”

Disinformation and propaganda, long mainstays of war, have been digitally supercharged in the battle for Ukraine, the biggest conflict the world has seen since the advent of smartphones and social media.

Tymoshko said he received about 10 similar messages via SMS and Telegram messenger in April and early May, the weeks leading up to Russia’s offensive in northeastern Ukraine that began on May 10 and opened up a new front in the war.

A Ukrainian security official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the Russians frequently sent large numbers of text messages from devices attached to an Orlan-10 long-range reconnaissance drone which can penetrate dozens of kilometres into Ukrainian airspace.

The devices, known as Leer-3 systems, imitate cellular base stations that phones automatically connect to in search of coverage, he added.

The phone barrage was accompanied by a social media blitz as Russian troops advanced on Kharkiv, according Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation (CCD), a branch of the national security council.

The average number of social media posts classed as disinformation about the war by Ukrainian authorities spiked to over 2,500 a day when the Kharkiv offensive began in May, up from 200 a day in March, data compiled by the CCD shows.

The CCD chief told Reuters that Ukrainian intelligence had assessed that disinformation campaigns were primarily carried out by Russia’s FSB security service and military intelligence agency, commonly known as the GRU.

Russia’s foreign ministry and the FSB didn’t respond to a request for comment on the Ukrainian assertions, while Reuters was unable to contact the GRU.
Moscow has accused Ukraine and the West of unleashing a sophisticated information war against Russia, using the West’s major media, public relations and technology assets to sow false and biased narratives about Russia and the war.

The Ukrainian security official acknowledged his country used online campaigns in an attempt to boost anti-war sentiment among Russia’s population, although he characterised this effort as “strategic communications” to spread accurate information about the conflict.

Kyiv:

Kyiv faced the largest drone attack of this year last night. Air defense took down over 40 drones, with the air alert lasting more than seven hours. Our air defense performed exceptionally well 💪🏻

📷 Reuters pic.twitter.com/HLhoUiXiDk

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) July 31, 2024

All clear in Kyiv now.

Over 30 drones attacking the capital city and suburbs in two waves in the dead of night and the early day.

The largest drone assault in 2024 so far.

Red tracer rounds from anti-aircraft machine guns soaring into the night sky, searchlight beams, the…

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 31, 2024

All clear in Kyiv now.

Over 30 drones attacking the capital city and suburbs in two waves in the dead of night and the early day.

The largest drone assault in 2024 so far.

Red tracer rounds from anti-aircraft machine guns soaring into the night sky, searchlight beams, the rumble of explosions above the sleeping city… that’s our nights.

No casualties reported as of now.

Kurahove direction, Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast:

Another russian failed assault.
The warriors from the 33rd Mechanized Brigade repelled an attack in the Kurahove direction using MLRS, artillery, drones and landmines. pic.twitter.com/mPxASC7MEG

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 31, 2024

Eastern Ukraine:

“The last two nights have been terrible…I will leave when there are no walls here…”
In eastern #Ukraine, Russian ‘glide bombs’ push civilians to flee. My report via @csmonitor https://t.co/k21aVhVsNL

— Scott Peterson (@peterson__scott) July 31, 2024

The Christian Science Monitor has the details:

The tiny poodle strains at its leash and barks, triggering a deafening reaction from a pack of dogs roaming the wreckage in this town in Ukraine’s embattled far east, some 10 miles from Russia’s gradually advancing forces.

“A lot of people are leaving, and let their dogs go,” explains the poodle’s owner, a retired Ukrainian military pilot in a faded orange tank top, who gives the name Oleksandr.

On their right stands the shell of an apartment block, hollowed out just days before by a single Russian “glide bomb” – a heavy Soviet-era “dumb” bomb upgraded with wings and a guidance system, and launched from a plane deep inside Russian airspace.

On their left is all that remains of a kindergarten complex, newly built before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but targeted a third time, also just days earlier.

“A lot of people lived here all their lives, and have apartments and jobs, but now our lives look like this,” says Oleksandr, as he describes how Russia’s advancing forces and use of glide bombs are triggering new departures from this Donetsk coal mining town.

He points to a nearby building entrance where a neighbor, Olena, “didn’t have a chance” when she stepped out after the first blast, only to be killed by a second – one of three deaths in the bombardment.

“Now the front is coming closer, and it’s more and more dangerous to live here,” says Oleksandr. “Now the intensity of the strikes is like never before.”

Augmenting Russia’s supply of rockets and missiles, the glide bombs, which can pack from 500 pounds to more than 3,000 pounds of explosive punch each, remain virtually unstoppable by Ukraine’s air defense systems.

To stay or to go is the decision being weighed by an increasing number of residents of Myrnohrad with heightened urgency in recent weeks.

Among the towns along Ukraine’s eastern front, Myrnohrad may be at particular risk, as it sits on an important Ukrainian supply line that Russian forces have already disrupted and – advancing west toward the Pokrovsk-Kostiantynivka road – appear determined to control.

“I tell everyone that you should leave, especially those with children and older people,” says Yurii Tretiak, Myrnohrad’s acting military administrator, who describes a state of “stable intensity.”

“We don’t know why they don’t like our kindergartens so much,” he says, noting that a number of schools have been targeted by 12 glide bombs, especially, that hit residential areas and claimed seven lives over a recent two-week period. Earlier in July, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was launching 3,500 such glide bombs each month.

“We can see that people are actually dying, so [people] decided to leave,” says Mr. Tretiak. “We hope more weapons [for Ukrainian forces] will come soon, and the front-line situation will be better.”

He steps into an abandoned Soviet-era theater, where the engine of one Russian rocket still hangs from the ceiling where it fell, two weeks earlier. Ironically, on a wall nearby remains a tile mosaic that commemorates Moscow’s former friendship with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

“Of course, weapons can help stabilize the front. But we really hope they can fly 30 kilometers [behind Russian lines]. If used with sophistication, then this category of glide bomb won’t exist,” he says.

In late April, the United States approved a long-delayed $60.84 billion military and economic aid package, and European nations have also funneled billions of euros into weapons and ammunition for Ukraine.

But so far that has not stopped Russian forces from moving forward, if slowly. One recent 24-hour period reportedly saw 172 front-line clashes along this sector of the front alone.

More at the link.

Donetsk Oblast:

/2. Air defence activity and black smoke raising somewhere from the ground filmed by residents of Donetsk at the time when loss of Russian Mi-8 was reported pic.twitter.com/AWTz9XbLqb

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 31, 2024

/4. Debris of the Russian Mi-8 near Donetsk https://t.co/vGokPM7hIc pic.twitter.com/UgICmMheNb

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 31, 2024

Khrustalnyi, Russian occupied Luhansk Oblast:

/2. Khrustalnyi, Luhansk region, where ATACMS missile engine was found. pic.twitter.com/ChkPkpavvt

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 31, 2024

Kuweires airbase, outside Aleppo Syria:

Exclusive footage from @KyivPost sources shows special forces carrying out a complex strike on a Russian airbase in Syria

“The target of the attack was Russian military equipment at the Kuweires airbase, which is located east of Aleppo and occupied by Russian forces.

The… pic.twitter.com/Du8FmnukbT

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 31, 2024

Exclusive footage from @KyivPost sources shows special forces carrying out a complex strike on a Russian airbase in Syria

“The target of the attack was Russian military equipment at the Kuweires airbase, which is located east of Aleppo and occupied by Russian forces.

The released videos purports to show key moments of the attack: first, a Russian mobile EW complex is destroyed, followed by drones attacking Russian military objects at the airbase itself.

Ukrainian intelligence tells Kyiv Post that the base was also used for training and transporting foreign mercenaries to the war in Ukraine.”

Full article: https://kyivpost.com/post/36646

From The Kyiv Post:

The Kyiv Post has obtained several exclusive videos and photos showing the continuation of a special operation by the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) units to degrade Russian military assets in Syria.

According to Kyiv Post sources within the intelligence agency, the Khimik group carried out another complex strike against the positions of the Russian forces in Syria at the end of July 2024.

The target of the attack was Russian military equipment at the Kuweires airbase, which is located east of Aleppo and occupied by Russian forces.

The released videos purports to show key moments of the attack: first, a Russian mobile EW complex is destroyed, followed by drones attacking Russian military objects at the airbase itself. The strike was reportedly carried out the day after a meeting in the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday, July 24.

The Kuweires airbase has been controlled and used by the Russians for military purposes since 2015.

Ukrainian intelligence tells Kyiv Post that the base was also used for training and transporting foreign mercenaries to the war in Ukraine.

In early June, Kyiv Post also published exclusive footage of Ukrainian special forces attacking enemy checkpoints, strongholds, foot patrols, and columns of military equipment in the Golan Heights in Syria.

According to Kyiv Post’s HUR source, since the beginning of the year, insurgents with the support of Ukrainian fighters have delivered numerous strikes against Russian military facilities under the control of the so-called Russian Armed Forces Group in the Syrian Arab Republic.

More at the link.

Khalino airfield, Kursk, Russia:

Judging by the official statement of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces the strike on Russian aviation ammunition storages was carried out by Navy, which means Neptune missiles were likely used.

“Tonight, an attack was made on a warehouse for storing weapons and… https://t.co/0OFipW5RXr

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 31, 2024

Judging by the official statement of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces the strike on Russian aviation ammunition storages was carried out by Navy, which means Neptune missiles were likely used.

“Tonight, an attack was made on a warehouse for storing weapons and military equipment near the settlement of Kursk (Russian Federation).

The work of enemy air defense and explosions at aiming points were observed. Combat work was carried out by designated units from the forces and means of the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in cooperation with other components of the Defense forces.

Detailed information about the result of the damage is being clarified.”
https://t.me/GeneralStaffZSU/16436

That’s enough for tonight.

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First, some adjacent material from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense:

Meet “Buddy”, a Belgian shepherd who serves in the Luhansk Border Guard Detachment. pic.twitter.com/AmIlDlnN0N

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 31, 2024

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