The air defense systems available in the world cannot just gather dust somewhere in depots when they can save thousands of lives from Russian terror – address by the President

2 April 2024 – 19:55

Dear Ukrainians!

Rescue operation is underway in Dnipro following a Russian missile strike. The buildings of a college and a kindergarten were damaged. All services are on the scene. I am grateful to everyone who is responding, who is arriving at the sites of the attacks to help people as soon as possible. This is the most important thing. It is equally important that Russian terrorists are getting responses to their strikes. Each time, they are getting more and more far-reaching responses. I am grateful to each of our warriors, to all Ukrainians who ensure this. The Russian war system, everyone involved in this aggression – all of them must truly feel that they will not get away with this aggression. Evil must lose. And it will lose. I emphasize this again: For Ukraine, air defense is about protecting lives, it is something that has to be in use. The air defense systems available in the world cannot just gather dust somewhere in depots when they can save thousands of lives from Russian terror.

The second point for today.

A conference on justice for Ukraine, that is, on holding all Russian murderers and terrorists accountable, is underway in The Hague, in the Netherlands. Justice will be inevitably ensured. I thank everyone who helps. I thank the Netherlands for their leadership. I thank the entire team of the International Criminal Court. I thank all the countries working with us under the relevant clause of the Ukrainian Peace Formula. And, of course, I want to thank all Ukrainian police officers, all investigators, all detectives, all prosecutors, all experts, everyone involved in the investigation of Russian war crimes and bringing the perpetrators to justice. I thank everyone who records evidence and helps the victims. This is a tremendous job. As of today, investigators of the National Police of Ukraine alone have registered more than 114,000 crimes related to Russia’s aggression. Justice must be established in each case. People need to feel it, and Russia must be held legally accountable. We are also actively working with our partners on the assets of the terrorist state and its associates. All frozen Russian assets – in different jurisdictions – must be used for defense against Russian aggression and restoration of normal life in our country after the Russian terror. This is an absolute must. And this year, real progress is needed on the relevant, completely fair decisions, primarily in American and European jurisdictions.

And a few other things that are important to note. I held a meeting with the Security Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the State Special Communications Service, and the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council on the situation with online casinos. The reports were informative. We are preparing appropriate steps that will provide the necessary control over the industry and help protect the interests of society properly. Today, I continued the tradition of our state’s respect for Ukrainian diversity. Ukraine’s strength is that we have many different communities among our people, and we value and honor each of them. This is the way it should be. I met with representatives of Protestant churches and the Catholic Church – these are millions of our people who celebrated Easter this Sunday. I greeted them. I thanked them for supporting Ukrainians, for being here in our country, in different parts of Ukraine, including the frontline areas. It is also important for our Christian communities and churches to develop the institute of military chaplaincy. This is a real support on the frontline: there must be those who help the human spirit find the necessary support. And, of course, we appreciate the efforts of churches in communicating with Christians around the world so that people everywhere know the truth about the war here, about Russian evil, about the crimes committed by the occupiers. This dialogue between churches and communities – the dialogue of truth – is effective. When light exposes evil, the war will sooner be ended fairly for Ukraine.

I thank everyone who helps Ukraine! I thank everyone who protects life, our state, our independence! I thank our warriors! Krasnohorivka, Novomykhailivka, Pervomayske, Tonenke, Klishchiivka, Terny, Bilohorivka and all other places of fierce battles – battles for the sake of Ukraine. I thank everyone who holds their ground and destroys the occupier. We must win.

Glory to Ukraine!

Big development in Ukraine: The country can now draft men as young as 25 for military service after President Zelensky on Tuesday signed a contentious new law lowering the age of conscription from 27, according to the Ukrainian parliament's website. https://t.co/EVL38EJqow

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 2, 2024

Estonia:

🇪🇪Estonia has the opportunity to buy some two to three billion euros' worth of shells and missiles for the Ukrainian army if the allies provide the funds, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur

Considering the prices of shells, Postimees estimates that this could amount to… pic.twitter.com/V77BqiLeBk

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 2, 2024

🇪🇪Estonia has the opportunity to buy some two to three billion euros’ worth of shells and missiles for the Ukrainian army if the allies provide the funds, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur

Considering the prices of shells, Postimees estimates that this could amount to approximately one million shells and Grad rockets.

«As for ammunition, funding is currently the bigger concern rather than the availability of munitions. When it was said that there was a lack of munitions, the Czech initiative to acquire 800,000 shells shows that munitions are actually available. Estonia also has a wide range of countries from which we could buy shells for Ukraine. I stated this yesterday at Ramstein, that if anyone is ready to financially contribute, they should contact us. We have the capability to purchase shells for Ukraine, including in large quantities and quickly.»

Full article: https://news.postimees.ee/7986347/postimees-in-ukraine-estonia-knows-where-to-purchase-two-billion-euros-worth-of-shells-for-ukraine

The cost:

Kharkiv completes first underground school construction. Schools without windows—this is what Russia’s world is like. pic.twitter.com/SPP5ifyIVH

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) April 2, 2024

Ukraine struck deep into Russia today.

https://twitter.com/revishvilig/status/1775032482183651494

https://twitter.com/revishvilig/status/1775036860730925340

Yet another proud 1980s job lost to automation. pic.twitter.com/2UV5oC728e

— Fabian Hinz (@fab_hinz) April 2, 2024

The Cessna jokes are all good fun, but it appears to actually be a Ukrainian made drone.

This is most probably an Aeroprakt A-22 Foxbat, a Ukrainian-produced light aircraft, equipped with an additional fuel tank and a remote control system.

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) April 2, 2024

/5. The only thing that is noted is that the new Kamikaze Drone somewhat looks like Aeroprakt A-22, Ukrainian two-seat, high-wing, tricycle landing gear ultralight aircraft. Which possibly became the basis for a new kamikaze drone. pic.twitter.com/Hews3kjjL1

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 2, 2024

Here’s the full text of the tweet #4 above:

/4. It’s noticeable that during this attack drones of a new model were used. Nothing is known about its characteristics besides the fact that it has a range which is at least couple hundreds kilometers more than the maximum range of the Ukrainian kamikaze “Lyutyi”, which were used to attack Russian targets within a distance of up to 1000 km.

P.S: This were not UJ-22 as Russian media claim

 

Source n Kyiv with knowledge of drone attacks in Russia tells @FT strike on oil refinery in Tatarstan “a joint operation of the SBU and GUR.”

“A Ukrainian long-range drone hit the primary oil processing facility at the Nizhnyokamsk refinery, after which a fire broke out.” https://t.co/aTCMuoaox9

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 2, 2024

As we @FT reported last month following interviews with officials in Kyiv: “Ukrainian officials claim to have developed drones with a range in excess of 1,000km and payloads capable of inflicting severe damage.”https://t.co/ObD1ENyJmB https://t.co/aTCMuoaox9

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 2, 2024

Confirmed: Ukraine hits Russia’s third-largest refinery, Taneco. This marks Ukraine's longest-range attack to date, extending the impact further into Russian territory. pic.twitter.com/XD8sEj87TM

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) April 2, 2024

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1775271955295588458

Tatarigami calls out the hypocrisy:

During a press briefing, US Representative to NATO Julianne Smith said that the US is not particularly supportive of Ukraine going after targets inside Russia, sparking understandable outrage. I echo this sentiment. In this context, I think we should look at a few key points:… pic.twitter.com/htI30lweUb

— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) April 2, 2024

Here’s his full piece via the Thread Reader App:

During a press briefing, US Representative to NATO Julianne Smith said that the US is not particularly supportive of Ukraine going after targets inside Russia, sparking understandable outrage. I echo this sentiment. In this context, I think we should look at a few key points:

Firstly, when a military adversary strategically positions hubs and vital industries, integral to its military operations, within its territory, targeting becomes necessary for achieving victory. Therefore, statements like those made by the US representative may seem either ill-informed or hypocritical, given that the US used this approach in almost every conventional war, such as WW2, Desert Storm, or the 2003 Iraq War. For instance, during the Desert Storm air campaign, 17 out of 20 generating plants were damaged or destroyed, with 11 considered total losses.

While Russia has attempted to reach similar objectives in Ukraine over the past years with partial success, it defies logic and reason why Ukraine should refrain from hitting targets crucial to Russian forces and its military complex.

Secondly, there’s a diplomatic aspect to consider. It’s unfair to blame the representative herself solely for the US policy stance, which likely stems from the current administration’s security approach. While the US has the right to impose restrictions on supplied weaponry, even though it’s not helpful, public dissatisfaction with Ukrainian strikes made by Ukrainian weaponry is harmful.

It may appear as mature diplomacy to certain circles in Washington DC, but it’s viewed as a weakness by the Russian side, potentially inviting further escalation. This is evident in Russia’s continued escalation of the war and deployment of North Korean ballistic missiles to target locations within Ukraine.

When we compare straightforward facts and metrics between 2024 and 2022, it’s clear that both the number of participants and the geographical dimension of the war have grown. If anything, it just underscores the glaring failure of the current administration’s approach focused on containment and de-escalation.

If you’re wondering where Russia is getting its ballistic missiles, Reuters has the answers you’re looking for.

DUBAI, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, six sources told Reuters, deepening the military cooperation between the two U.S.-sanctioned countries.

Iran’s provision of around 400 missiles includes many from the Fateh-110 family of short-range ballistic weapons, such as the Zolfaghar, three Iranian sources said. This road-mobile missile is capable of striking targets at a distance of between 300 and 700 km (186 and 435 miles), experts say.

Iran’s defence ministry and the Revolutionary Guards – an elite force that oversees Iran’s ballistic missile programme – declined to comment. Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The shipments began in early January after a deal was finalised in meetings late last year between Iranian and Russian military and security officials that took place in Tehran and Moscow, one of the Iranian sources said.

An Iranian military official – who, like the other sources, asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the information – said there had been at least four shipments of missiles and there would be more in the coming weeks. He declined to provide further details.

Another senior Iranian official said some of the missiles were sent to Russia by ship via the Caspian Sea, while others were transported by plane.

“There will be more shipments,” the second Iranian official said. “There is no reason to hide it. We are allowed to export weapons to any country that we wish to.”

U.N. Security Council restrictions on Iran’s export of some missiles, drones and other technologies expired in October. However, the United States and European Union retained sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme amid concerns over exports of weapons to its proxies in the Middle East and to Russia.

A fourth source, familiar with the matter, confirmed that Russia had received a large number of missiles from Iran recently, without providing further details.

Ukraine’s top prosecutor said on Friday the ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea to Russia had proven unreliable on the battlefield, with only two of 24 hitting their targets. Moscow and Pyongyang have both denied that North Korea has provided Russia with munitions used in Ukraine.

By contrast, Jeffrey Lewis, an expert with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said the Fateh-110 family of missiles and the Zolfaghar were precision weapons.

“They are used to point at things that are high value and need precise damage,” said Lewis, adding that 400 munitions could inflict considerable harm if used in Ukraine. He noted, however, that Russian bombardments were already “pretty brutal”.

A Ukrainian military source told Reuters that Kyiv had not registered any use of Iranian ballistic missiles by Russian forces in the conflict. The Ukrainian defence ministry did not immediately reply to Reuters’ request for comment.

Following the publication of this story, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force told national television that it had no official information on Russia obtaining such missiles. He said that ballistic missiles would pose a serious threat to Ukraine.

Former Ukrainian defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk said that Russia wanted to supplement its missile arsenal at a time when delays in approving a major package of U.S. military aid in Congress has left Ukraine short of ammunition and other material.

“The lack of U.S. support means shortages of ground-based air defence in Ukraine. So they want to accumulate a mass of rockets and break through Ukrainian air defence,” said Zagorodnyuk, who chairs the Kyiv-based Centre for Defence Strategies, a security think tank, and advises the government.
Kyiv has repeatedly asked Tehran to stop supplying Shahed drones to Russia, which have become a staple of Moscow’s long-range assaults on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, alongside an array of missiles.

The Zaporizhzhia front:

The path of the russian Buk air defense system has ended.
Ukrainian warriors destroyed it on the Zaporizhzhia axis.

📹: @DI_Ukraine pic.twitter.com/ipClW6hbvI

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) April 2, 2024

The Bakhmut front:

Ukrainian Ratel S ground kamikaze drone used to target the bridge on the Bakhmut fronthttps://t.co/hY8aVPCxVz pic.twitter.com/RwG1zCw9Tc

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 2, 2024

Novomykhailivka:

Shadow air reconnaissance unit shares footages of the destruction of the Russian AFV column near Novomykhailivkahttps://t.co/6BdZKaNtTB https://t.co/BjtGNmLubU pic.twitter.com/G7oobr8hof

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 2, 2024

The Avdiivka front:

'Shadow' air reconnaissance unit continues to clear the battlefield of abandoned Russian T-90Ms. Avdiivka fronthttps://t.co/FUuL0NQvmQ https://t.co/0lNfJgs99K pic.twitter.com/ptsYmjPTG4

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 2, 2024

The Insider has published another part of their joint investigation with Der Speigel and CBS News regarding Havana Syndrome.

Vitalii Kovalev, the man arrested in Key West, as seen on @60Minutes, is a technical officer for the GRU as well as a member of the FSB cyber unit called the 16th Directorate, a former senior U.S. counterintelligence official said. https://t.co/PIXa3FMDTg

— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) April 1, 2024

Here are some excerpts:

Vitalii Kovalev worked for years as the executive chef of some of the American East Coast’s most prestigious Russian-themed haute cuisine restaurants. After his arrest following a car chase in Florida in June 2020, evidence emerged that Kovalev, throughout his culinary career, had also been serving as an undercover technical officer for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. One of the FBI agents who interviewed the Russian spy after his arrest later suffered symptoms of Havana Syndrome, a phenomenon that, according to a new report by The Insider, 60 Minutes, and Der Spiegel,may have been caused by a directed energy weapon wielded by the GRU itself.

It starts with a classic American car chase. And like an episode of Cops, it was all caught on the dash and body cams of Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies in Florida.

Just after 11:00am on June 16, 2020 the dispatcher issues a BOLO alert over the radio: be on the lookout for a white convertible Mustang. The car is traveling at speeds of 110 miles an hour, weaving in and out of traffic on Route 1 heading north out of Key West, Florida. The driver can be seen talking on his cellphone as he veers into head-on traffic. The pursuit carries on for 15 miles, until deputies throw spike strips across the blacktop that blow out his tires and force the Mustang off the side of the road.

Bodycam footage obtained by 60 Minutes shows guns drawn and deputies ripping the driver out of the car as he grabs for his bag on the passenger seat. As the kicked-up dust clears, we see a white male with hands cuffed behind his back and the contents of his beach bag all around him.

There are some odd things in that bag: a soot-covered bowl used to burn paper, pieces of a hotel notepad with bank account information scribbled on them. One officer says, “This is weird though. Look at this, it’s all like…Citibank…Discover Savings – $75,000. It’s all, like, different bank accounts and stuff.” There’s a laptop and a spider’s web of cables and what looks to be a commercially available device, shaped like a walkie-talkie, that can plug into a car and read the information on the onboard computer. It can also erase information such as the onboard GPS data. And also in the bag is a Russian passport.

The name on the passport is Vitalii Kovalev, born in St. Petersburg in 1985. He has a green card and a New York State driver’s license. Answering his arresting officers, Kovalev speaks in near-perfect English, saying “yes” when a deputy reads him his Miranda rights and asks if he understands he doesn’t have to say anything to the police. But he talks anyway — for nearly 45 minutes in a combination of conversational Russian and English. What’s truly bizarre is that he’s talking to no one in the vicinity; his chatter is all captured on an onboard camera in the back of the cop car where Kovalev is sitting, handcuffed, while the police officers are scouring through his bags’ belongings outside the car. But Kovalev’s pauses and responses make it seem as if he’s conversing with someone.

“Yes, because this one, he drove here, too,” Kovalev says. “Because it’s necessary to… needs twenty…Mistakes are unknown, sixteen is fucking a lot ….Yes, five. He could hold five. If weaker, four, four.”

He has no known devices on him after the arrest — no earpiece connected to a cell phone. He is wearing casual clothes and a pair of eyeglasses that are slowly descending down the bridge of his nose. “An agreement is an agreement,” Kovalev continues. “An agreement is an agreement. An agreement is an agreement. An agreement is an agreement…I didn’t kill anyone. I never. I never killed. I never… No, here I’ll be very sad… then I’ll go to Russia.” At this point his glasses fall to the floor, and coincidentally or not, his chatter ends.

Kovalev would plead guilty to charges including resisting an officer and evading police, along with an assault charge for spitting on a nurse giving him a Covid test while in custody (he tested positive). A Florida judge issued a $40,000 bond, meaning he could have paid to get out of jail (he clearly had the money), but for some reason he chose not to.

Kovalev spent 26 months in jail in Florida, from June 2020 to August 2022. 60 Minutes learned that during that time, Kovalev drew the attention of the FBI. During the 6 months after his arrest, FBI agents spent about 80 hours interviewing him.

The reason the story of Vitalii Kovalev is relevant to the joint investigation 60 Minutes, The Insider and Der Spiegel have conducted into Anomalous Health Incidents, more commonly known as Havana Syndrome, is because of what happened to one of the case agents who interviewed him for those many hours.

Carrie is an active FBI agent and we are not revealing her full name. She was authorized by the FBI to speak with 60 Minutes about her personal experience but was not allowed to discuss her case work. Several other sources described Carrie as experienced in counter intelligence work and made a name for herself in the Bureau for work against Russian and other intelligence operations in Florida.

While Kovalev’s statements to the FBI are classified, sources have told 60 Minutes that after the rounds of interviews were completed, he was offered the chance to sign a document confessing to working as an illegal Russian agent, but he declined and went back to jail. A few months later, Carrie was hit with symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome while she was home in Key West.

“All of a sudden, it was like somebody flipped a switch, and bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids,” Carrie told Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes. “It was like a high pitched, metallic drilling noise, and it knocked me forward at, like, a 45-degree angle this way. Immediately [I] felt pressure, and pressure and pain started coursing from inside my right ear, down my jaw, down my neck, and into my chest, while that sound was concentrated inside my right ear.”

Carrie says she was hit a second time about a year later at her new posting in California. She is still suffering debilitating symptoms that she says left her “not the same as I used to be.”

Kovalev told the authorities he was an unemployed chef from New York who was only in Key West to visit the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum. A source with knowledge of the investigation told 60 Minutes he had traveled down the East Coast, booking rooms at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. and then at another hotel in Miami. But he never checked out of them. Behaving like a spy, he kept his reservations active, likely to hide his actual location. When police asked him why he ran from them he said simply, “I don’t know.” And we don’t know for sure what he was doing in Key West. There were no pictures of Ernest Hemingway’s house in his phone. A source told us there were pictures of one of the tallest buildings in the town and the lock to the front gate.

Key West is a known target of foreign intelligence – especially Russian foreign intelligence – because of the several U.S. government and military facilities in the area.

Scanning social media and open-source records, 60 Minutes, The Insider, and Der Spiegel found Kovalev had worked as the executive chef at three popular Russian haute cuisine restaurants, two Mari Vannas — one in New York, the other in D.C. — and Ariana Soho (shuttered in 2015). The restaurants were popular in the late 2010s in both cities. Russian hockey players, international pop stars, and U.S. government officials regularly ate there, often within feet of one another. And Kovalev was the top chef of record in both 2012 and 2013. We found a petition for a non-immigrant visa for Kovalev, sponsored by the D.C.-based Mari Vanna. His talents in the kitchen earned him write-ups from local food critics and spots on morning TV cooking segments. But there was much more to Kovalev’s talents than his modern take on borscht.

As part of his U.S. visa application we found the equivalent of Kovalev’s university transcript. He was a 2009 graduate of the St. Petersburg State Marine Technical University, Russia’s leading naval engineering institute. Kovalev studied in its military engineering department, and his transcript shows he earned credit hours in classes like “protection of state and commercial secrets,” “electroacoustic transducers,” and “digital signal processing techniques.” His graduate thesis was titled, “Efficiency of Helicopter Noise Detection Channels.” While studying at this institute, Kovalev was employed as an engineer at the Elektroavtomatika engineering and R&D lab, a wholly owned subsidiary of MIG, the Ministry of Defense’s military aircraft manufacturer. The company boasts on its now defunct website that it is the leader in development of advanced onboard navigation systems for the military industry.

And yet, after two months of a cooking certificate program and some time in the kitchens of a few restaurants in Saint Petersburg, he was off to New York and D.C. on a special talents visa to run high-profile kitchens.

The Insider’s investigative team dug into records on the Russian side that paint a much different picture of the man who cooked for celebrities — and who had a young wife, Maria, living in Brooklyn.

The team found that Kovalev had a military secrets clearance at level X3, an inevitable perk given he had worked as an electronics engineer in a military engineering facility. That is not the highest level of clearance in Russia, but it does indicate that, due to the secrets he knew, in 2012 Kovalev could not have left Russia to work as a chef without special clearance from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, one of the successor agencies of the Soviet-era KGB.

Kovalev got out of prison in Florida in August of 2022. We are told he had been warned about going back to Russia, that spending 80 hours with the FBI might not sit well with authorities there. But in September 2022 he flew home via Belgrade and posted a picture of himself having drinks with friends on Instagram. “You won’t believe it. Right now in St. Petersburg :),” Kovalev posted.

But he didn’t stay long, according to travel records obtained by The Insider. In October he told friends he was leaving on a “business trip” and to contact him through the mail. Records show that in December he took a train from St. Petersburg to Rostov-on-Don, near the Ukraine border. On New Year’s Eve 2022, he crossed into the Luhansk region of Ukraine via the Russian border crossing at Novoshakhtinsk.

From there, Kovalev’s digital trace goes cold as, evidently, he himself did. A death certificate for him was issued on February 8, 2023. Typically in wartime, the Russian authorities conduct investigations into how their soldiers are killed on the battlefield. In this case, no such investigation was carried out. Kovalev’s death certificate states that he died from traumatic hemothorax and multiple fractures of the ribs, wounds caused by unclarified military actions during a period of active service. According to military records, Kovalev was not mobilized — not officially, at least. He was a reserve officer and was never supposed to leave Russia without express permission.

Was he sent to the front explicitly to die, either at the hands of Ukrainian forces or at those of his own side? What was he doing in the United States, under what seems to have been the elaborate cover of a four-star chef?

Kovalev’s family announced his death to friends on social media on March 1, 2023. He was buried at Kazan cemetery in St. Petersburg the next day.

“I assess that I was targeted — because I pissed off the wrong people for doing what I was doing,” Carrie, the FBI agent who interviewed Kovalev, told 60 Minutes. “And all I was doing was my job and trying to protect my country.”

After production was complete on the 60 Minutes story and a television promo was released showing clips of the car chase and arrest of Vitalii Kovalev, 60 Minutes and The Insider were approached by a former senior U.S. government official who worked in counterintelligence. That source said he recognized Kovalev from his appearance in the promo and remembered his case. Kovalev, the source said, was known by the U.S. government to be a technical officer for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, as well as a member of the FSB cyber unit called the 16th Directorate. Other members of the 16th Directorate, or Center 16, have been indicted for a widespread hack of controls at energy infrastructure objects — like power plants — in the U.S. and elsewhere.

As our joint yearlong investigation has shown, there is compelling evidence linking Havana Syndrome to a directed energy weapon wielded by operatives of GRU Unit 29155.

This much coincidence takes a lot of planning!

Pathetic to the point of being genuinely funny

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) April 2, 2024

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new Patron tweets or videos today, so here’s some adjacent material.

Brilliant work… one of the best documentaries of this war!

Everybody, you should see it.

“Saving animals… to stay human!” (c) pic.twitter.com/4vy8m1QOD9

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) April 2, 2024

“We, Our Pets, and War”

A moving documentary by
@ptuxerman
about victims of Russia’s war that we rarely really talk about – our beloved doggos and cats.

They suffer, too, and lose their loved ones, too, and they seek warmth and comfort amid this war, too.

Make sure to see it if you’re in Ukraine now.

And of course it features the one and the only, @PatronDsns 🐶🐶🐶🐶

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) April 2, 2024

This will apparently be streaming in May.

Open thread!