Russian Missiles Hit Kyiv Apartments, As Ukraine Leader Vows To Retake Lost Cities

Smoke billows from a residential building following explosions in Kyiv on June 26. Several explosions rocked the west of the Ukrainian capital in the early hours, with at least two residential buildings struck, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

A suspected Russian missile attack on a residential neighborhood in the Ukrainian capital injured at least five people early on June 26, trapping some residents under the rubble and sparking a fire in a nine-story apartment building.

The bombardment of Kyiv came as Ukraine's defense forces battled to regroup after the loss of a strategic town to Russian forces on the front lines hundreds of kilometers to the southeast, where some of the most intense fighting is raging four months into Russia's full-scale invasion. Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko went to the scene in one of the city's historic northern neighborhoods, known as the Shevchenko district, where at least two buildings were affected by the early morning explosions.

The Shevchenko neighborhood hosts universities, galleries and other cultural businesses, and restaurants.

Klitschko initially said some victims were already in the hospital but others were still trapped under rubble. Rescuers "pulled out a 7-year-old girl," he said.

Later, the commander of Ukraine's national police force, Ihor Klymenko, said on television that at least five people had been injured by a missile striking their building.

Klitschko called it an attempt by Russia to "intimidate Ukrainians" ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid on June 28-30. G7 leaders are also gathering near Munich on June 26 to discuss pro-Ukraine measures.

Some 600 kilometers to the southeast, Ukrainian forces said a day earlier that they had made a "tactical withdrawal" from the city of Syevyerodonetsk in a blow that could shape the fighting in the east.

But President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed in his nighttime video address that Ukraine would eventually retake the cities it has lost since Russia's all-out invasion began on February 24.

Zelenskiy said the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II had taken a heavy toll on Ukrainians and their defenders but spoke of eventually winning the war.

"We don't have a sense of how long it will last, how many more blows, losses, and efforts will be needed before we see victory is on the horizon," Zelenskiy said.

Zelenskiy is due to remotely address a gathering in the German region of Bavaria of leaders from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized countries on June 27 to urge further international support for Ukraine's defense.

On June 25, Ukraine's military said defense forces had withdrawn from Syevyerodonetsk after weeks of intense battles to fight from higher ground in nearby Lysychansk, across the Siverskiy Donets River.

Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said his forces were carrying out a "tactical regrouping" by pulling its forces out of Syevyerodonetsk.

Syevyerodonetsk, a city in the Luhansk district of around 100,000 residents before the war, has been devastated as Russian forces sought to concentrate gains in the two eastern districts known collectively as the Donbas.

Russia-backed separatists have swaths of that region since Russia annexed Crimea and helped kick off the eastern Ukrainian fighting in 2014.

Meanwhile, fears mounted of a widening war since Ukrainian officials reported "massive bombardment" from rockets "fired from the territory of Belarus and from the air" and Moscow said it would provide Belarus with an advanced missile system.

In Belarus, strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka's dependence on Moscow has increased since a crackdown over protests that began when he claimed a sixth presidential term in flawed elections two years ago.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised meeting with Lukashenka on June 25 that Moscow plans within months to supply Belarus with Iskander-M missile systems, a nuclear-capable, mobile guided-missile system with a range of up to 500 kilometers.

"Today's strike is directly linked to Kremlin efforts to pull Belarus as a co-belligerent into the war in Ukraine," the Ukrainian intelligence service said of the missiles launched from Russian warplanes over Belarusian territory.

Lukashenka allowed thousands of Russian troops to stage attacks on Ukraine from the earliest stage of the invasion.

A representative of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate, Vadym Skibitskiy, told RBC-Ukraine on June 25 that Belarus is maintaining 4,000-6,000 of its own troops near the Ukrainian border.

He estimated that Russia has around 1,500 of its troops in Belarus to help with air, special forces, and missile components of the invasion.

“There’s got to be a way to make them stop”

I’ve been watching the men who study and write about international politics and the prevailing opinion in this group is peace at any cost. Ukraine has to negotiate a settlement that doesn’t “humiliate” Putin. (The thing they seem to universally share is they are at least as old as dirt. Us old guys don’t want any shake-ups.)

Then I was listening to this guy, see link. His theory, which I think is more likely than any other explanation I’ve seen, is that Putin needs the war to survive in power. If he’s correct, then Ukraine might negotiate a settlement that lasts long enough for Putin to force his military to recover and rearm. Putin may also find a way to limit the top to bottom pilfering that has created Oligarchs and rich maintenance men who are stealing parts from parked tanks. But Putin will continue to attack and absorb SOMEBODY because he must in order to remain in power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0fxWT0FV4&t=312s

Russia Ministry of Defense

Fake : Russian Armed Forces attacked civilian targets in Kiev.

Truth : Ukrainian sources speak exclusively of a strike on a residential nine-story building. However, they do not indicate that it is precisely behind this house that the Artem defense plant is located, which produces air-to-air guided missiles and artillery shells. The photo shows what flew in the shops of the plant.

It was he, as an object of military infrastructure, that was the target, and it was already struck in April. Then the Ukrainian media also talked about a strike on a residential building - absolutely according to the same scheme as this time.

The facts of damage to the plant indicate that the strike was aimed precisely at Artem, and an air defense missile hit the nine-story building, as it happened, for example, in Odessaor in Kiev .

Channels publish videos of an air defense missile falling into residential areas. The photo with the destruction of the house shows that the damage is not only from above, but also from below the residential building, which also confirms the version of the fall. At the same time, the MO missile hits exactly the workshops of the Artem plant.
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Do you think Ukraine is “winning” this war?

The pink and non-pink areas are impressive in one respect. But I don’t think it takes into consideration that if you look at the photos of cities and villages before and after you can see the destruction of Ukraine.

Secondly, they are not harvesting grain, transporting grain, manufacturing or exporting fertilizer and their natural gas, oil and shale deposits are no longer being developed.

If and when the Russians cut Odessa off from the Ukrainians, I think that a land locked Ukraine might be amenable to neutrality and an understanding of Russia’s paranoid delusion of NATO invasion.

The people that should be worried live in Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.

They really need to read the fine print of Article 5 of the NATO agreement. There’s a real nice “catch-22” verbiage in it.

Like Yossarian said, ‘That’s some catch, that catch-22,’ he observed. ‘It’s the best there is,’ Doc Daneeka agreed.”

Minsk Accords? Was that where, after the Maidan Coup, Ukraine promised some autonomy to the eastern, ethnic Russian states and instead, they launched a war on them? Or are you thinking of something else?

Do you mean the original Minsk ones - https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL(1994)054-e - or the terms that Ukraine were effectively coerced to sign, and which Putin unilaterally declared void in February this year?

There's a whole shopping list of stuff that not only pre-dates EuroMaidan, but is a damn sight more legally AND morally enforceabable than Minsk was.

The Transfer of Crimea from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine (1954). This was, in their own words, a “noble act on the part of the Russian people... to evince the boundless trust and love the Russian people feel toward the Ukrainian people”. Despite it being a fait accompli sixty years before Euromaidan, AND subsequent agreements reinforcing the legitimacy of that handover, Putin ordered its annexation in 2014. He does like doing stuff on anniversaries, does Putin.
The Belovezh Accords (1991) which formally ended the Moscow-run Communist regime, and initiated the breakup of the USSR. Their provisions started with "The USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, is ceasing its existence" included the “setting up of lawfully constituted democratic… independent states… on the basis of mutual recognition of and respect for State sovereignty”, and their EQUAL “right to self-determination” AND their respective "territorial integrity".
- Lukashenko's Belarus, and Putin's Russia, do not accept that the breakup of the USSR happened.
- To this day Belarus has laws to prohibit discussion of the ending of the USSR.
- Putin's Duma is now debating whether or not Lithuania ever left the USSR.
- The United States promised to wait to officially recognize Ukrainian independence until after Russia, Ukraine and Belarus had all done so.
- In December, the Commonwealth of Independent States was established with that declaration formalised in Minsk. The Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS and its relevant (Alma-Ata) Protocol (1993) further reinforced the CIS charter stated that all the members were sovereign and independent nations and it formally abolished the Soviet Union.
- The formation of independent states was then formally recognized by the USA, Europe, and the United Nations.
The Memorandum on security assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aka the Budapest Memorandum (1994). Its provisions reinforced the prior accords, and included such undertakings as:
1. Respect Belarusian, Kazakh and Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.
2. Refrain from the threat or the use of force against Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine.
3. Refrain from using economic pressure on Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine to influence their politics.

Multiple treaties with Ukraine were terminated unilaterally by Russia in March 2014, one week after the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Including all three of the above.

Even Putin's objection to NATO expansion is based on a completely non-binding agreement made by James Baker, ratified by absolutely nobody either in the USA or in Soviet Russia. It was only ever binding on the USA and NATO while the USSR still existed, while the USSR didn't accept the sovereign independence of its constituent nation states, and Germany was partitioned.

Gorbachev said unequivocally that America fulfilled every aspect of that agreement. That agreement couldn't bind the next US President, or the presidents of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia OR ANY OTHER EX-SOVIET STATE, after they became fully independent. Not one single world leader ever ratified it, and even if they had it never stipulated what to do in the event of the USSR disbanding itself.

Again, Putin only makes a big deal of it because the non-NATO expansion thing was set up while the USSR existed, and guess what! Lukashenko's Belarus, and Putin's Russia, do not accept that the breakup of the USSR happened. They are both utterly wedded to the idea that every international agreement that even mentions an independent Ukraine is null and void because they regard the breakup of the Soviet Union as illegitimate.

The attempt to blame Schwab, or Ukraine, or talk of NATO expansion, for the last eight years of turmoil in Ukraine is misplaced.
Long before any of that, an intellectual lobby inside Russia - represented well by Putin, Dugin and Zhirinovsky but also by numerous current Duma politicians - were resolved to undo the breakup of the USSR.

They don't want communism back; they just want an ethnonationalist Rashist empire with Russia in charge and Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Khazakstan, Chechnya, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania etc. under its yoke.

Arguing that Putin has any moral high ground here is a bit like saying the Deep State might be doing some bad stuff, but is motivated by good intentions.

Putin and Schwab/Soros are two sides of the same coin.

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