We all must be strong, united, we must withstand to prove that freedom is indeed stronger than aggression – President of Ukraine’s address

30 October 2023 – 21:09

I wish good health to all Ukrainian men and women!

First and foremost, I want to acknowledge our combat brigades. All the warriors who are fighting at the hottest sections of the front lines. Thank you to all the warriors who, through their assaults and their resilience – heroic resilience – demonstrate in practice that Ukraine is capable of resisting Russian pressure, capable of defeating the occupiers, capable of winning.

The 53rd and 110th separate mechanized brigades, the 79th separate airborne assault brigade. Thank you, guys, for Avdiyivka and Maryinka! The 14th, 32nd, and 57th separate motorized infantry brigades – thank you for defending the Kupiansk direction. The 80th separate airborne assault brigade and the 93rd separate mechanized brigade – thank you, warriors, for the Bahmut direction, for advancing! The 33rd separate mechanized brigade – thank you for your strength in battles in the south of Ukraine!

Today, I had important negotiations with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte. I informed him about the situation on the front lines, about our actions, our capabilities. I am grateful for the assistance! For air defense systems, for ammunition for our soldiers, for powerful things that help us maintain the security of the eastern part of the Black Sea. Our agreements with Mark, which we discussed during the meeting in Odesa, are being implemented. It is also very important that the Netherlands has become the first state outside the G7 with which we started bilateral work on security guarantees. We discussed with the Prime Minister the results of the advisors’ meeting on the Peace Formula in Malta.

I met with a delegation from the U.S. Congress – three congressmen who are currently visiting Ukraine. It’s an important visit of solidarity. I’m grateful to everyone in Congress – from both parties – who helps defend freedom, to President Biden, his team, and every American who understands that freedom in the world can only stand when America is strong, and when there is no doubt among the enemies of the free world about American leadership. I informed the congressmen about the situation on the front lines, the very successful use of U.S. ATACMS recently provided to our defense forces. Of course, we also discussed the issue of military and budgetary support.

Today, I also held several important meetings regarding our future international steps. A wrap-up meeting regarding the advisors’ meeting in Malta and future plans regarding the Peace Formula. A meeting on the expected assessment from the European Commission regarding our progress in European integration. And also a meeting regarding our strategy to keep the world’s attention on Ukraine, to support the unity that helps us defend ourselves and ensure the systematic weakening of the aggressor state.

We must soberly assess the Russian system. They have mobilized all their forces to try not to lose what they seized in Ukraine, but in doing so, they have contaminated their own territory with such a level of hatred and degradation that, for the second time this year, Russia is losing control over events. We see that mutineers are heading to Moscow, and no one is stopping them. We see that the power vertical in Dagestan is evaporating, leading to a real upheaval. These are all signals that Russia can, for now, sustain military operations and increase pressure on the frontlines in some places but is unable to withstand this strategic confrontation.

Strategically, we all must be strong, we must be united, and we must do everything possible and impossible to withstand, to reclaim what is ours, and to prove that freedom is indeed stronger than hatred and aggression. For this, our unity is needed, unity between us, unity across all of Europe, unity in America, and unity throughout the free world… Unity is the most effective, precise, and long-range weapon.

I thank everyone who is helping! I thank each and every one who is fighting and working for the sake of Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine!

https://twitter.com/rustem_umerov/status/1719102956107071794

Was pleased to meet in Kyiv with a delegation of members of the #US Congress representing both the Democratic and Republican parties, @RepFrenchHill, @RepMikeQuigley, and @RepStephenLynch.

Adoption of NATO standards, improving procurement procedures for the army, and localization of weapons production in Ukraine are priorities for the ministry’s team.

Briefed the members of the US Congress on the situation on the front lines, our urgent military needs.

The cost:

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1718981510957559822

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1718986143721562386

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1718986947044028757

Lviv:

Also, the cost:

The New York Times has taken a deep dive into three childhood friends from Lviv who went to war together. Here are some excerpts:

At a gas station in western Ukraine, three men in their late 20s, friends since childhood, slid into plastic chairs. Exhausted and anxious, they began to sing.

It was March 2022, three weeks after Russian forces invaded, and the men were on their way to war. “Let It Be Cold and Windy” was an old folk tune about weathering adversity that they had sung as boys in a Ukrainian scouts group. Somehow, it brightened the mood.

“In grief and trouble, and the sea of ​​darkness,” they sang, “I will shield you from misfortune with a cloak.”

Their names were Artem, Dmytro and Roman. They had met as boys in the scouts group called Plast, in the western city of Lviv, and forged bonds over mountain hikes, sunburns, scratched knees and bug bites.

Later, boyhood games gave way to college and girlfriends and nights out in Lviv.

Artem Dymyd was a traveler. Addicted to adventure, he was never without his parachute as he sky-dived and base-jumped around the world. Friends called him “Kurka,” Ukrainian for chicken, because of the mop of curly hair he styled into a mohawk as a youth. The nickname stuck. When he got older and led a troop of younger scouts, they called themselves “the eggs.”

Dmytro Paschuk left college to join the French Legion, looking for adventure and a steady income, then came home to open a wine bar in Lviv. He was an entrepreneur full of big ideas. But he was also deeply invested in seeing his small home village near the city thrive, and hoped to start a small farm there.

Roman Lozynskyi studied political science in Lviv and got into local politics before spending time as an intern in the Canadian Parliament. He was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament in 2019, and had started to split his time between Kyiv, the capital, and Lviv.

None of them were really sure of the exact moment they met. In some ways, it felt like they were simply always together.

“Artem, Dmytro and I were like three sides of the horizon: south, west and east,” Roman said. Their interests and personalities were very different, but, “Boom!” he said, describing how they had become fast friends.

Now war had reunited them. After the invasion, all three volunteered to fight for Ukraine. They had just returned from weeks in a military training camp and were on their way to Lviv to collect drones, radios, food and other gear donated to the unit they would serve in together.

If they were friends before, Dmytro later said, the war would soon make them brothers.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Artem was traveling around Brazil, parachute in hand, seeking out places to base jump. He boarded a flight home when he heard the news. He had volunteered for the military in 2014 and fought in the east against Russia-backed separatists, so he quickly rejoined.

Roman was in Kyiv. He had volunteered as a reservist weeks earlier as the possibility of war became more real. He made plans to head to a military training base in central Ukraine, and called Dmytro, who was in Lviv running his wine bar and other businesses.

Dmytro had also decided to volunteer and was already on his way to the same facility, after talking to Artem about the best place to go for training.

Within days, the three men met at the base in central Ukraine to sign contracts and start training. And three lives that had diverged since their days in the scouts came colliding back together.

Soon, they were headed east as part of a specialist operations unit.

They found purpose and solidarity in their missions and a deep desire to seize back control of Ukraine and end the devastation of indiscriminate attacks on civilians. And they were driven by their shared vision of their country’s future — of a full-fledged democracy free from Russian interference.

There was comfort but also fear in serving together, Roman explained, especially after perilous missions in the spring of 2022, when their unit was focused on operations behind enemy lines.

“We really understood how high the risk was to lose someone from our team,” Roman said. But Roman took solace from the fact that Artem and Dmytro had previous military experience.

They had close calls, including once when their camp was hit by shelling in the first weeks of the war.

“We talked a lot about death,” Roman said. “And then, it happened.”

In the fourth month of the war, the three friends were deployed near the small village of Bila Krynytsya in Ukraine’s south. Fighting had been fierce along the banks of the Inhulets River, which served as a front line between Russian and Ukrainian troops.

On the night of June 18, Dmytro and Artem were asleep in their camp — Roman was on a mission in a different village — when a Russian shell came hurtling toward them. The explosion rattled Dmytro from sleep. He heard screams and instinctively searched for his friend.

“I couldn’t find Kurka,” he said, using Artem’s nickname.

Artem’s injuries were devastating. Shrapnel had ripped into his body. Another friend from the scouts, Vitya Kolya, who was a medic in the same unit, tried to treat Artem as they loaded him into the back of a pickup truck. Dmytro was at the wheel and sped to a field hospital. Artem managed a final few words: “I am alive.”

“For a minute, I couldn’t move at all, as if I forgot who I was or where I was,” Dmytro said.

“I was afraid, and I wanted everyone to do something,” he said. “I was giving orders to unload the car,” he said, adding, “I was afraid to be near him.”

Artem died within the hour. He was 27.

“Kurka was a dude who wasn’t afraid of death,” Dmytro later said. “And he wasn’t just saying that, he lived like that.”

Three days later, Roman and Dmytro traveled to Lviv to say goodbye to their friend.

Hundreds of current and former scouts lined the streets as his coffin was carried to the military cemetery on Lviv’s outskirts. Roman, wearing military fatigues, eyes heavy with grief, and Dmytro, in a white linen shirt with long hair, joined the crowds. A military band played a funeral march.

At the grave, they helped unwrap Artem’s beloved parachute and spread it gently over the open ground. Then his coffin was placed on top.

They joined friends and family members who shoveled the first heaps of soil onto the wooden box.

While no official death toll has been released since the war began, U.S. officials estimated that by the end of August this year, close to 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and some 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. The mounting losses are evident in the military cemetery in Lviv, where the once-empty hillside around Artem’s grave has seen hundreds of burials since June 2022.

After the funeral, Roman and Dmytro sat on steps at the edge of the graveyard. They spoke of Artem, of his zest for life and his carefree attitude.

“To be honest, instead of this strange orchestra, it should be Metallica playing or Johnny Cash,” Dmytro said, pushing his shaggy hair back from his eyes. “We should have driven his coffin on pickup trucks. It should be some sort of celebration.”

Within days, he and Roman headed back to war.

The fall turned to winter, their first at war. In December and January, Roman and Dmytro posted videos singing carols for Christmas and Orthodox Christmas from the front line. They marked a year since Russia invaded.

In early March, they were given a short break. After a few days away, Dmytro returned to camp in the Kherson region, and Roman planned to follow several days later. Roman was still in Kyiv on March 12 when another soldier called from down south.

The Russians had discovered their position and launched a kamikaze drone attack. Dmytro died instantly. Like Artem, he was 27.

The death of another close friend haunted Roman. “You really don’t know why these things happen how they do, and why it happened to Kurka or Dmytro,” he said.

The three were together all the time in the war, Roman said, but he was not present when both of his friends died.

“So why was I not with them?” Roman asked. “You think if you were there, probably you could do something, save them or something.”

Again, he traveled west to say goodbye to a friend.

Dmytro had grown up in the small village of Khlivchany, about an hour from Lviv. That was where he was buried in March as a rainstorm soaked the mourners, the drops mingling with their tears.

As his coffin was driven to the church, local residents knelt in the puddles that pooled along the roadside. A blue and yellow flag, soaked through by the rain, clung to the wood.

Roman stood alongside Dmytro’s fiancée, Ganusya, in the church. She and Dmytro had planned for an April wedding just three weeks later.

“This is the greatest pain, I think, if we start to talk about how much stuff they could have done in the future,” Roman said this summer, reflecting on the loss of his friends.

He was sitting at a cafe called Respublika, one of Dmytro’s projects that he had long been planning to open. Dmytro died before he had the chance, but friends and family opened the cafe this spring.

There is much more at the link!

Avdiivka:

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1718916199218663863

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1718981830622216243

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1719007067665481899

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1719006047929544826

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1718911222026846649

Russian “reporter” Filatov, who is present in the Avdiivka frontline, explains what went wrong: newly arrived reserves were meant to demine paths for vehicle columns, then to be followed by other forces, including the 114th Brigade. The goal was to overwhelm Ukrainian positions and artillery.

However, for unclear reasons, it was the 114th that went first and ended up under extreme Ukrainian shelling, causing major losses. The following columns faced the same fate as no demining took place.

Filatov complains also about disingenuous reports that were being sent to the higher-ups regarding Avdiivka.

https://t.me/FilatovCorr/2077

Here’s the screen grabs of Dmitri’s translation:

 

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1719120355279659327

Here’s the screen grabs of Dmitri’s translations:

 

Bakhmut:

https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1719053146004103513

Bakhmut direction, everyday life #3ошбр #всу (full video https://t.me/ab3army/3298)

Russian occupied Crimea:

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1718902201471348773

Russian sources report that a combined attack using 2 ATACMS missiles, 3 unmanned boats, and, presumably, Storm Shadow missiles, was launched against Crimea last night.

This would be the first use of ATACMS against Crimea.

Ukrainian official source this morning reported about 17 Russian casualties in Cape Tarnakhut, alongside 5 “vehicles”. It is said that the Russian air defence regiment was attacked. The unmanned boats were noticed in Sebastopol (Rybar). The Storm Shadow claim also comes from Rybar. Ukrainian channels have not publicly said which weapon type they used.

Additionally, the Ukrainian “South” operational command says that Russians are actively developing a military hub in Crimea where they will keep resources at a decent level of readiness.

https://t.me/astrapress/41363
https://t.me/rybar/53748
https://ukrinform.ua/rubric-crimea/3780221-u-krimu-trivae-sezon-bavovni-rosiani-namagautsa-pererozpodilati-sili-ok-pivden.html

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1718934046909034672

Multiple pro-Russian sources say that the Russian bases near Olenivka at the Cape Tarnakhut have been struck by two ATACMS and potentially Storm Shadows / SCALP-EG. In addition, they claim that three USVs were involved in an attack at Sevastopol.

The Ukrainian Army hasn’t commented on that, yet.

This would mark the first usage of ATACMS in Russian-occupied Crimea, further complicating Russia’s already strained logistical issues and even diminish Crimea as a staging ground for Russian attacks in all of Ukraine.

#Ukraine #Crimea #Olenivka

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1718891511171994109

At 03:00 am this morning local time, a Russian air defense regiment at Olenivka, Russian-occupied Crimea, has been hit. The source says that 17 Russian soldiers were wounded and 5 vehicles damaged.

The casualties are probably higher.

Source: https://t.me/astrapress/41363

#Ukraine #Crimea #Olenivka

 

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1718944050152157249

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1718942256785195467

Krynky, Kherson Oblast:

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1718685910634463694

There is enough evidence that Ukrainian forces successfully crossed the Dnipro river at multiple points. Among them is the settlement of Krynky.

This is in line with claims from Russian sources as well as the fact that the Russian commander of this sector, Colonel General Makarevich, has been removed from command, as mentioned in my previous post.

Source of video: @NOELreports

#Kherson #Ukraine

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1718776514408230993

Other parts of Kherson Oblast:

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1718777406138237406

Russian occupied Volnovakha, Donetsk Oblast:

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1718904137155309918

Russian soldiers murdered an Ukrainian family of four, including 5 more relatives in Russian-occupied Volnovakha.

It happened during the a birthday celebration. During the party, the Russian “soldiers” appeared, demanding from them to surrender their house. The father refused and for that they were all murdered. The murderers are Kadyrovkis from Chechnya.

The pictures of the massacred family are circulating in social media. I won’t share them. Instead, I will share pictures of the families in good times, before Russia came and murdered them. Their names were: Andrei Kapkanets, his wife Natalia and their children Nikita (4 years) and Nastya (9 years).

#Ukraine #Volnovakha

I’ve seen the pictures of the family circulating on social media. Trust me that you don’t want to see them, which is why I’m not posting those posts, even though they’re from legit sources I regularly reference.

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There is a new slideshow at Patron’s official TikTok. Those don’t embed here, so click through if you want to see it.

Here’s some Patron adjacent material from the State Border Service of Ukraine via the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense:

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1719056824794534288

Open thread!