Weekly Exclusives

Weekly Exclusives - a newsletter that contains author publications, interviews, exclusive comments, photos and videos.

Nov 29, 2024

Фото: Сергій Чузавков — Photo: Serhii Chuzavkov

Mimes at one of the pedestrian crossings on Khreshchatyk during a performance dedicated to the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims and held to draw public attention to the problem of speeding by drivers, Kyiv, November 17, 2024.

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Interview

Bilateral amputation didn’t make my life any significantly different, - Vitaliy Motsnyy, AFU Sergeant

Military service members with injuries or disabilities should be legislatively entitled to return to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) ranks if they wish so. They can contribute a lot to the army: support security efforts, improve the training of young soldiers, share their skills and knowledge and prepare them for what they will have to face at the front line.

This opinion was shared in a Victory Commanders series interview with Ukrainform by Vitaliy Motsnyy, alias Texas, a junior sergeant at a strike unmanned aerial systems platoon.

Vitaliy went through one of the hottest battles of this war – the battle of Bakhmut. It was there where he suffered a severe injury that later left him with both his legs amputated. Doctors declared him unfit for service, but he, however – after a bilateral amputation and having his missing legs replaced with prothetic ones – returned to the army ranks.

Currently, Vitaliy Motsnyy is training UAV pilots. In this edition of the Victory Commanders series of interviews by Ukrinform, read and watch about the path the hero has passed, where he thinks the focus should be on in training new soldiers, the deployment by the AFU of UAVs and ground robotic systems, and the challenges of uncontrolled circulation of firearms to be dealt with after the war is over.

Jaroslav Nad, former Defense Minister of Slovakia

Slovakia’s ex-Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad’ made history as a politician who was responsible for giving Ukraine nearly a dozen MiG-29 fighter jets. Ironically, it is precisely for this move that the current government led by Robert Fico is now pushing criminal charges against him, accusing the former official of treason and sabotage against the country’s own air defense network. Nad’ told Ukrinform of some details around the handover of warplanes, explained why it’s beneficial for Slovakia to have Ukraine as a full-fledged NATO and EU member, reflected on the possible reasons why Fico seems to maintain a pro-Russian position, and touched upon the issue of humanitarian demining in Ukraine, in which he is currently involved.

Oleksandr Pavlyuk, AFU Ground Force Commander

During the 1,000 days of the war, Ukraine’s Defense Forces have gone through an enormous path of building and evolvement. How the Ground Force have changed in terms of quantity and quality, how many new weapons and equipment products the Ukrainian defenders have learned, how the Russians changed their tactics to push out Ukrainian forces from the border region of Kursk – Ukrinform discussed these and more questions with Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk, the AFU Ground Forces Commander.

Lena Wilderäng, a Swedish firefighter and volunteer

A rescue service member and professional adventurer in Sweden, Lena Wilderäng has also been a vocal supporter of Ukraine, along with her husband Lars, a prominent writer and blogger. Since the big invasion in 2022, she has been to Ukraine multiple times, delivering firetrucks, ambulance vehicles, gear, and other aid to help Ukrainians in their fight against the Russian onslaught. She also authored a book, Sunflower Effect, about the resilience of the Ukrainian people, spreading awareness among the Swedes about the Russian war. In November, Lena came to Ukraine as part of a research mission by the Center for Civil Society Studies to study the role of civil society in Ukraine’s defenses. The volunteer spoke of her ongoing assistance effort, public opinions in Sweden regarding the war, and critical things that help people survive in major conflict, as well as opened up about why the Russian invasion was personal to her.

Publication

A Life Symphony Performed by Ukrainian Surgeons on The 1,000th Day of the War

An Ukrinform reporter attended a unique heart surgery performed on a newborn just minutes after a cesarean section

The newborn's heart is the size of a walnut. Born almost doomed, he was made fully healthy by the golden hands of Ukrainian surgeons.

When on the evening of November 18, Professor Ilya Yemets invited me to be present at a one-of-a-kind surgery the next morning, I stayed up all night from excitement. Of course, this was not because of air raid alerts. After all, tomorrow I will eyewitness something wholly incredible for any ordinary person to even imagine. Well, how is that?! The yet unborn child has a heart defect incompatible with life; nature has confused in places the aorta and the pulmonary artery -- a congenital cardiac defect (deficiency in the septum between the aorta and the pulmonary artery) that effectively doomed the newborn to die within days after birth. ... But that was not going to happen! Ukrainian cardiac surgeons will perform an extremely intricate surgery immediately after a cesarean section -- for the first time globally! -- to repair a cardiac deficiency with a jewelry-like precision, which will take just a few minutes for the tiny man to become healthy!

Putin’s dreams of partitioned Ukraine. The West will never accept another Munich-1938

On November 19, the Russian dictator issued the decree “On Approval of the Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence”;

On November 20, a number of Ukrainian media outlets, citing intelligence sources, reported that the Russian Defense Ministry had prepared a forecast on the development of the global military and political situation until 2045, which includes the elimination of Ukrainian statehood, and that Moscow will soon try and communicate this “plan” through diplomatic channels to the United States or, rather, to representatives of the future Trump administration;

Overnight on November 21, the Russian Federation fired a missile of an unknown class at Dnipro City. Initial reports said that it was a Rubezh (‘frontier’) class of intercontinental ballistic missile, but later Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency, the HUR, identified it as medium-range ballistic missile, (i.e. not an ICBM, but a MRBM), part of the Kedr (cedar’) MRM missile system.

Without looking into each of these events in detail, let's focus on event No. 2, i.e. the enemy's "plan". What is in it? It is about the partitioning of Ukraine into three separate entities, namely:

The so-called "new regions of Russia": Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts and Crimea;

Russian propaganda fabricates losses among foreigners defending Ukraine

Recently, pro-Russian Telegram channels circulated a doctored screenshot, allegedly from the website of the Kyiv-based funeral agency "Vik." The fabricated ad claims the company provides "Cargo 200" (military code for transporting deceased personnel) services worldwide, listing Poland, Canada, Colombia, Taiwan, and Australia as the most popular destinations. The ad also falsely states that these services began in 2022.

This claim is entirely false. First, the screenshot was created using a graphic editor. While the funeral agency indeed offers international transportation of deceased persons, its official website does not mention any "most common destinations" or indicate that the service began in 2022.

Second, the agency has been providing this service well before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. An analysis of the web archive confirms that the company offered international delivery of the deceased as early as 2018.

Russian propaganda attempts to discredit Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunner's heroic feat

Russian propagandists have attempted to undermine the achievement of Nataliia Hrabarchuk, a Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunner who successfully shot down an enemy cruise missile using an Igla MANPADS during a large-scale air attack on Ukraine in the early hours of November 17.

In civilian life, Hrabarchuk was a preschool teacher. Since 2021, she has served as an anti-aircraft gunner with the Galicia-Volyn Radio Engineering Brigade under the Air Command West. However, her heroic feat has drawn the ire of Russian propaganda, which habitually seeks to discredit Ukrainian defenders by portraying them as "Nazis," "drug addicts," or conscripts not willing to resist Russian aggression and supposedly coerced into service.

Initially, Russian media and Telegram channels claimed that the video of Hrabarchuk's shootdown was staged at Kyiv's Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio. Later, Russian bots on X amplified a post by a user with the nickname "@KirriloUA," featuring a Taras Shevchenko portrait as an avatar. The post falsely alleged that Hrabarchuk's missile hit a house belonging to the user's relatives, forcing them to spend the night with neighbors. To support this, a photo of bags purportedly packed by the displaced family was included.

However, this claim is entirely fabricated. The photo of the bags originates from Russia and was first published over a decade ago. It depicts belongings of "refugees" from Russian-occupied Donbas who were resettled in Shmakovo, Kurgan region, Russia. Propagandists mirrored an old image using graphic editing software to fit their narrative.

The source of this fake claim is a Russian bot masquerading as a Ukrainian. Created in April 2024, this bot has a history of spreading disinformation, including a previous fake about a Russian man complaining of receiving a Ukrainian passport. At the time, the bot's avatar featured a photo of a dog named "Patron." Its posts consistently promote Russian propaganda themes in Russian.