Ukraine Breaking News Today Live on 07-28-2024

A modified water scooter carrying multiple cameras, military equipment, and loaded with explosives was found drifting near a beach in Istanbul’s Çatalca district on Thursday.

A highly modified and weaponized Yamaha “Wave Runner” jet ski was discovered floating off the coast of Turkey near Istanbul on July 25. The military commentator HI Sutton said on his “Covert Shores” website that the previously unknown uncrewed surface vessel (USV) was another of Ukraine’s kamikaze maritime drones that have caused havoc against Russia in the Black Sea.

Images of the vessel show that it is fitted with an electro-optical sensor turret and a planar satellite communication antenna, as well as other antennas. Various electronic boxes are also fixed to the rear of the watercraft.

Discussion of Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction has become commonplace. However, hopes are being dampened by lingering concerns of corruption.

“Ukraine is fighting a war against Russian aggression, but we must also prosecute the war against our domestic enemy – corruption – no less vigorously,” says MP Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a former head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

Nalyvaichenko’s maxim is also heard in Washington DC’s halls of power, according to Robb Watters, a longtime DC insider and the founder of the city’s most well-respected lobbying firm, the Madison Group. He says that Ukraine’s problems with corruption are “well noted in DC” and “a big reasonwhy some people do not want to continue funding Ukraine.”

The alleged drone strike in Russia's Kursk region followed Saturday's HUR reports of attacks on three Russian air bases and a refinery in Ryazan, Saratov, and Murmansk regions.

A Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at a fuel depot in Russia's Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, the regional governor said on Sunday.

There were no casualties reported.

The ideals embedded in the democratic systems that saw their first modern flowering in the United States are now being fought for and defended in Ukraine.

Nearly 250 years after America was created, Ukraine has become a beacon of hope symbolized by the statue of Liberty. Like a loving parent protecting their child, America has a natural obligation to fully support Ukraine, America’s favorite young Democracy. 

America’s resolve was recently tested after Russia launched strikes that destroyed a Ukrainian children’s hospital as the NATO Summit convened. Russia is messaging that NATO is irrelevant and Russia will win regardless of the human cost. NATO must call the Russian child killers’ bluff with a strong response and expedite Ukraine’s NATO membership. Otherwise, Russia will be emboldened to escalate its terror.

He said that in contrast to the “weakness” of the West, Russia’s position in world affairs was rational and predictable

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Saturday (27 July) Russia’s leadership was “hyper rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfil its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO.

Orbán, a nationalist in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he forecast a shift in global power away from the “irrational” West towards Asia and Russia.

Sidebar Stories – In the vein of “literature is news that stays news,” Kyiv Post presents some not necessarily factual narratives that offer added insight into Ukraine’s realities.

I’ll be 70 on my next birthday and I’m beginning to feel my age thanks to a short, balding man with a Napoleon complex and the bunch of psychopaths he rules from Moscow.

I’m pretty fit for my age, if I do say so myself. But a lifetime of sport: soccer, rugby, basketball and especially running have taken their toll on my feet, ankles and knees – as two operations in the past three years attest.

The Ukrainian athlete who previously risked disqualification by refusing to shake hands with a Russian athlete told AFP her motivation as the war raged on in Ukraine.

Ukrainian fencing great Olga Kharlan says winning an Olympic gold medal will be an achievement against all the odds after fearing it "was my fate not to go Paris."

Twice, the 33-year-old quadruple world champion, who has two individual Olympic bronze medals, as well as a 2008 team saber gold, came close to missing out on the Games.

The world in focus, as seen by a Canadian leading global affairs analyst, writer and speaker, in his review of international media.

Israel's air force says it has hit Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, after 12 children and young adults were killed in a rocket attack while playing football in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel has blamed the Lebanese militant group for Saturday's attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams, but Hezbollah has strongly denied any involvement. Early on Sunday, the IDF said it had conducted air strikes against seven Hezbollah targets "deep inside Lebanese territory". It is unclear whether there were any casualties. The rising tensions have the potential to trigger an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, whose forces have regularly exchanged fire since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October. Saturday's attack at the town's football pitch was the deadliest loss of life on Israel's northern border since the war began on 7 October. A UN statement said "maximum restraint" was crucial by all parties, with the risk of a wider conflict that would "engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief". - BBC

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has arrived in China for a four-day official visit to reset relations following her dramatic decision last year to pull Italy out of Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative. The Italian premier will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang as the two countries seek to stabilise ties after recent turbulence. Shortly before Meloni’s arrival, the Global Times, a Chinese Communist party newspaper, blamed Washington for Italy’s BRI exit and said economic and trade ties remained strong. Cui Hongjian, an analyst at China Institute of International Studies Research institute, said Beijing would also probably raise Italy’s support for European Union tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. But its main priority would be to stabilise the relationship in the face of geopolitical uncertainties, including those stemming from the US election. China would tell the Italian side “we need some more resilience in the relationship”, he said. - FT

Almost all aerial targets were destroyed in the Odesa region.

Ukraine's defense forces shot down a Russian Kh-59 guided air missile and seven Shahed strike drones in the early hours of Sunday, July 28.

Ukrainian Air Force Commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk said this in a post on Telegram.

Ukrainian-Americans are quite numerous and should do their part in preventing Trump from returning to power and, among other things, selling out Ukraine.

Ukrainians have been asking me what it means for their country that President Joe Biden has decided to withdraw his candidacy and that Vice-President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.

I think that it only means good things.

After the victory against the north African nation, Ukraine is set to face Argentina on Tuesday, July 30, in its attempt to advance to the playoffs.

Ukraine scored 2–1 against Morocco during the second round of the Group B Olympic football tournament on July 30.

The match, which took place at the Geoffroy-Guichard Stadium in Saint-Étienne, saw Ukraine scoring its first goal during the first half of the match, followed by Morocco’s penalty goal around half-time.

Trump makes bizarre and seemingly alarming statements addressing American conservative Christians.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Christians on Friday (26 July) that if they vote for him this November, “in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

It was not clear what the former president meant by his remarks, in an election campaign where his Democratic opponents accuse him of being a threat to democracy, and after his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat to President Joe Biden, an effort that led to the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Moscow dismisses Kyiv's latest statements on peace talks and attempts to engage China as an enabler.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday he "does not listen" to what he called Ukraine's contradictory statements on peace talks.

Lavrov spoke after Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba visited China for talks this week. President Volodymyr Zelensky then said Beijing sent a "clear signal" it supported Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Reading the latest signals concerning prospects for ending Russia’s war against Ukraine: Will peace be given a chance?

Lots of interesting developments around Ukraine over the past week or so, that might just suggest that momentum might again be building for peace talks over the next few months.

First, Ukraine seems to have made really significant concessions in negotiations with bondholders over the past few days, which gives the prospect of a debt restructuring by September. The question was why bother rushing if the outlook on ending the war was so uncertain, and Ukraine would never have market access as long as the war was on-going? It only begins to make sense if someone is thinking here that the war might end sooner rather than later, and Ukraine then would need access to markets to help with the huge reconstruction needs.

The war has turned many of Ukraine’s beach resorts into no-go areas, but for Russians, it is also increasingly hard to “get away from it all.”

Russians still have access to their choice of familiar resorts – the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, the ​​Azov Sea, including part of the occupied territory of Ukraine, and even the Georgian coast with its luxurious beaches. And yet many Russians stubbornly head to Crimea for their holiday, encouraged by the Russian government’s statements about recent improvements to the peninsula’s resort infrastructure.

Russia’s second-largest budget allocation, after military expenditure, is propaganda. Apparently, it was propaganda-budget money that paid for the purchase of ten ocean sharks from Singapore.

The ship from Russia's Baltic Fleet Group came six weeks after Moscow sent a submarine and other naval vessels to Havana, which led to heightened tension between Washington and Moscow.

A Russian navy ship arrived in Cuba on Saturday for a three-day stay, six weeks after Moscow sent a submarine and other naval vessels to visit the communist state off Florida's coast.

The Smolny training ship was greeted with salvos from Cuban artillery before it anchored in Havana's harbor, where residents and tourists gathered to take a look.

Local resistance reported that Russian authorities asked locals to confirm the rights to their properties by submitting relevant documents alongside a Russian passport.

Russia planned to confiscate properties in the occupied Kherson region from those who don’t have relevant documents, including a Russian passport, said resistance group Yellow Ribbons.

According to Yellow Ribbon on Telegram, the initiative is taking place in the Heniche district of the Russian-occupied Kherson region, where the “so-called Russian Ministry of Land and Property Relations regularly forms lists of residential objects on the [temporarily occupied territories] of the Kherson region, which allegedly have signs of derelict property.”

A junta led by Colonel Assimi Goita took power in 2022 and broke the country's traditional alliance with France, in favor of Russia and saw a number of Wagner mercenaries deployed to the country.

Mali's army and its Russian allies suffered a major setback and significant losses Saturday while fighting separatists in the country's north, a spokesman for the rebels told AFP.

The West African nation's military leaders that took power in a 2020 coup have made it a priority to retake all of the country from separatist and jihadist forces, particularly in Kidal, a pro-independence northern bastion.