Flagship scuttled
Ukrainian armed forces (UAF) scuttled the navy flagship Hetman Sahaidachny to prevent its capture by Russian Federation forces, a defense ministry statement said Friday, March 4.
The Krivak-class Soviet-era frigate according to the was not operable and was unable to put to sea, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in the statement.
It was not clear from the report in which Black Sea port the ship was scuttled.
The Sahiadachny during its service in the Ukrainian navy often performed drill and ceremony and flag-showing functions, hosting foreign dignitaries or acting as the sole Ukrainian representative to international fleet training events.
Reznikov said the scuttling was “painful for officers and crew…but Ukraine’s navy will be built anew”.
Ukraine night skies empty for first time in war with Russia
Skies across Ukraine were seemingly empty for the first time during the night and early morning hours of Friday-Saturday, as the Russian Federation (RF) apparently broke off its traditional nighttime bombardment of Ukrainian targets.
No national-level Ukrainian official source responsible for tracking and making public warnings of and aftermath from RF strikes reported any strike during the night. Sources checked by KP included General Staff, Army command, Interior Ministry, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
The Kyiv regional administration announced two air raid warnings over the night, but reported neither strikes nor damage.
Ukrainian conventional and social media by mid Saturday morning likewise reported no long-range RF attacks having taken place overnight.
Ukraine’s General Staff in a 0600 Saturday statement asserted Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) units were holding RF forces at all locations, and in selected sectors forcing them back. The statement alleged RF forces were reaching the end of their supplies of food, fuel and ammunition.
RF army has locked up Chornobyl service staff, heightened chance of radiation leak
Russian Federation (RF) armed forces have locked out civilian engineers responsible for maintaining the protective shelter built over the remains of the Chornobyl nuclear reactor, according to comments by a regional official reported by Ukrainian news agencies on Saturday.
Yury Fomichev, mayor of the north Ukrainian town Slavutych, told viewers of a local television marathon that RF soldiers entered the facility on the first day of the war, locked up all Chornobyl station service personnel, and have been holding them ever since.
Ukraine’s government working with assistance agencies and foreign governments in 2016 completed a containment shelter entombing the remains of Chornobyl reactor number 4, which blew up in 1986 in the world’s worst nuclear power accident.
Service staff, most based in Slavutiych, among other maintenance tasks, monitor the shelter’s stability and radiation levels. They stopped doing this work entirely when RF forces entered the facility and locked up all staff on duty, Fomichev said.
Fomichev said the reactor remains are inherently unstable and failure to monitor and maintain the site substantially increases the risk of a radiation leak. He called for national-level authorities to negotiate a green corridor with RF leadership, so that a new shift of maintainers might take over the facility, and the locked up shift be set free.
Fomichev said the detained engineers are living in primitive conditions, are in some cases in need of medicine or medical attention, and are receiving insufficient food from their RF jailers.
Fomichev’s comments came in the wake of Thursday RF shelling of a working Ukrainian nuclear power plant – Europe’s largest – near the town of Enerhodar. Officials there said nuclear reactors there were not seriously damaged, but, continued attack would likely disrupt power transmission and cooling equipment, causing blackouts and possibly triggering a meltdown.
Zelensky eviscerates NATO for hypocrisy: support only with words
President Volodymyr Zelensky in a late Friday evening speech (March 4) laced into NATO and its member states for being all talk and no walk, when it comes to defending freedom and liberty and the lives of Ukrainian men, women and children.
Zelensky eviscerated the Atlantic Alliance for failing to take any meaningful action to help Ukraine defend itself, and for, by its inaction, leaving Ukrainian men, woman and children to suffer and die in the face of a Russian Federation (RF) offensive aimed directly at Ukraine’s civilian population.
“For days they (NATO) have known they (the RF) were coming,” Zelensky said. “They have watched as the Russians have shelled our houses, our homes, our buildings, our children, our schools. They are destroying the entire basis of what you need for basic, normal human life. And they (NATO) have decided to let this continue, by not establishing a no-fly zone.”
Zelenskyy said NATO aversion to a no-fly zone is built on a “narrative” that by opposing the RF, things could get worse. He said NATO’s leadership was acting as if it was “under a hypnosis” that has frightened itself into inaction over a potential confrontation with the RF, even though NATO’s arsenal is overwhelmingly superior to the Kremlin’s.
