To understand the significance of the attack in the Bryansk region: the Slava plant is a storage facility for the strategic state reserve of fuel of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
On its territory there are 48 reservoirs with a capacity of 5 and 2 thousand /1
cubic meters.
Earlier on Wednesday, it was already attacked by unknown UAVs, as a result of which 3 storage facilities for 15,000 tons of aviation kerosene were destroyed.
Judging by reports in Russian public pages, another 10-15 thousand tons of expensive fuel destined /2
🔥Not Kursk alone: Russian media report a drone attack on the Bryansk region
According to the enemy media, UAVs attacked the Slava plant, which is located 80 km from the border, at night. /3 twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The drones fell and exploded 3 meters from the fuel tanks.
According to Russian media, the plant's storage facilities were empty. But, judging by the video, they are burning like full ... 4/4 #SlavaUkrayini t.me/Pravda_Gerashc…
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1/ Russian Telegram channels report an attack of more than 750 drones on 15 Russia's regions between the evening of May 20 and the morning of May 23. threads.com/@anton_gerashc…
2/ Due to drone attacks, the airports of Vladimir, Kaluga, Kostroma, Tambov, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, as well as Moscow airports Vnukovo,
2/ U.S. President Donald Trump told European leaders this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not ready for peace in Ukraine because he believes he is winning the war, the Wall Street Journal reported on May 22, citing three undisclosed sources.
Trump's reported wsj.com/world/europe/t…
statement marked the first time he acknowledged to European leaders what they and #Kyiv have long maintained — the Kremlin has no intention of ending its full-scale war against #Ukraine️.
3/ The conversation on May 19 reportedly included President Volodymyr Zelensky, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President Antonio Costa.
Earlier the same day, Trump held a phone call with Putin, days after largely inconclusive negotiations in Istanbul, where Russia sent a delegation of low-level officials. kyivindependent.com/ukraine-russia…
1/ Why is Trump behaving this way? It's clear that the hook is on his lip, and it's obvious that the Russians are pulling. And pulling hard. Interview with Bezsmertny obozrevatel.com/ukr/politics-n…
2/ Roman Petrovych Bezsmertny is a Ukrainian politician.
A brief biography of Roman Bezsmertny
Roman Bezsmertny was born in the Kyiv region on November 15, 1965.
Bezsmertnyi received his higher education at the Dragomanov National Pedagogical University. While still studying, he began working as a school teacher.
But already in 1994, Roman Bezsmertny began his political career - he was successfully elected as a People's Deputy of Ukraine and entered the second convocation of the Verkhovna Rada as a candidate from the Ukrainian Republican Party. obozrevatel.com/entity/verhovn…
He was one of the authors of the Ukrainian Constitution of 1996. He served in the Rada during the third, fourth, and fifth convocations
3/ Following his latest phone call with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump obozrevatel.com/ukr/person/don…
has taken the most advantageous position for #Moscow.
He has effectively supported the russian formula of "negotiations first, then ceasefire", refused to tighten sanctions against russia and confirmed his determination to develop "large-scale trade" with it.
Talks about the ability to end the war in Ukraine in one day, the art of "big deals" and the "power of personality" of Donald Trump have been forgotten.
2/ Russia rejects a ceasefire in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on May 21.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call kyivindependent.com/after-call-wit…
on May 19 as Ukraine and its allies intensify efforts to end Russia's war. Putin rejected a ceasefire and instead insisted on negotiating a "memorandum regarding a potential future peace treaty."
Lavrov rejected the push to "have a truce and then we'll see," claiming that the "root causes" of Russia's war need to be resolved.
3/ Lavrov accused European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron,
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, of pushing Trump to tighten sanctions against Russia.kyivindependent.com/tag/emmanuel-m…
1/ 18 hours in the making of a president: Inside Nicușor Dan’s election win
Romania’s new leader told POLITICO how he will approach international affairs and what he will do to rebuild trust in a democracy battered by corruption, economic strife and Russian meddling.
----
It’s 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 18 — election day — and Nicușor Dan is trying to hold it together.
After months of campaigning in the country’s fraught presidential race, the independent mayor of Bucharest has just 12 hours left before he will learn his fate.
The morning air is cool in the yard outside School Number 4 in Făgăraș, Dan’s Transylvanian hometown. The sun breaks through, picking out streaks of snow on the tops of the mountains in the distance
2/ Today, the school Dan attended as a young boy is being used as a polling station, and he has chosen to come here with his long-term partner Mirabela Grădinaru to vote. At one point, the emotion of returning home and seeing his old neighbors and teachers threatens to overwhelm him.
“I was forcing myself not to,” Dan tells POLITICO afterward, laughing, as he mimes tears rolling down his face. “It was very emotional.”
Wearing a plain dark suit, white shirt and navy tie, he grips Grădinaru by the hand as they meet familiar faces and old friends on the playground. Several receive hugs.
Dan, 55, was born in the house next door to the school, a low-rise building painted apricot pink, with vines hanging over the garden to the side. His parents lived in the town for most of their lives, and Dan returned here for several months during the pandemic before winning his first term as mayor of Bucharest later in 2020.
With voting underway, POLITICO was granted exclusive access to Dan as he spent time with his family and closest aides away from the TV cameras on election day. These would be the last hours of calm before his life would be transformed forever. When the results rolled in on Sunday night, it became clear he had defied the odds and beaten the radical right-wing nationalist George Simion to take the presidency.
Dan’s victory was cheered in the halls of power across much of Europe, where many centrist politicians and officials had feared Simion would derail their mainstream agenda.
3/ Desperate Dan
While the opinion polls had started to tighten in the final week of the campaign, the 38-year-old Simion had been favored to win the run-off after winning the first round with 41 percent of the vote to Dan’s 21 percent.
“After the first round, the people for our side felt a little bit desperate,” Dan says, seated at the Bistro Story Caffe in the center of Făgăraș, with his partner and family at the next table.
“Mr. Simion made a lot of mistakes,” he adds, chief among them refusing to show up for television debates.
Dan and Simion debated each other directly only once — a three-hour affair that observers agreed benefited the mayor.
While Simion spent much of the time attacking his opponent loudly and aggressively, Dan remained calm, delivering methodical responses and refusing to be drawn into a slanging match.
2/ This, along with the Kremlin's constant repetition of maximalist demands on Ukraine, belies the alleged "readiness" of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to establish peace, according to a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Following another phone call between US President @realDonaldTrump Trump and Putin on May 19, senior Russian officials continued to deny the legitimacy of Ukraine's president, government, and constitution, as well as Ukraine's sovereignty - despite the Russian dictator himself feigning interest in peace talks to end the war.
This time, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, spoke at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum on May 20 with the usual Kremlin narratives.
According to him, there are currently no officials in Ukraine authorized to conclude a peace agreement with Russia - and the aggressor is going to determine those who are "authorized" to do so, based on their own interpretations of the Constitution of Ukraine.
Medvedev also questioned Ukraine's sovereignty and stated that Ukraine is a "failed state," and the "lack of legitimacy" of Ukrainian government officials, according to the Russian official, raises "serious questions" about who Russia can negotiate with during future peace talks.
With these statements, analysts believe, Medvedev overturned Putin's attempts to feign interest in achieving peace.
"Medvedev's statements directly contradict Putin's reported agreement with US President Donald Trump to immediately begin bilateral talks with Ukraine. They indicate that Russia is not really interested in engaging with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian government officials who are key to bilateral talks to end the war," the material states.
3/ Russian officials have repeatedly resorted to the false narrative of the "illegitimacy" of @ZelenskyyUa and the #Ukrainian government before - in order to justify Russia's refusal to engage in good faith negotiations with Ukraine and to facilitate Russia's long-standing military goal of
"establishing a pro-Russian puppet government in Kyiv".
These narratives have been regularly refuted, including by ISW analysts:
- holding elections in Ukraine during martial law is expressly prohibited by the constitution and Ukrainian legislation.
The Ukrainian authorities cannot lift martial law either - as long as, as stipulated in the relevant law, there is a "threat of attack or danger to the state independence of Ukraine and its territorial integrity."