On October 17, President Volodymyr Zelensky clarified comments he made earlier, stating that Ukraine does not pursue nuclear weapons.
Zelensky had earlier in the day said that during their meeting with Donald Trump, he told him that Ukraine must be a member of NATO or else it will pursue nuclear capabilities for its own protection.
Zelensky, in a press conference held with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Tuesday, retracted his comments and stated that Ukraine did not seek nuclear weapons.
He said: “We never talked about…that we were preparing to make nuclear weapons or anything like that.”
Zelensky reprimanded the reporter for asking questions about the earlier remarks and said that they were made in order to describe how the Budapest Memorandum failed to provide Ukraine an effective security umbrella.
In the 1994 agreement, Ukraine agreed that it would give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S.A., U.K. and Russia.
Zelensky said that Ukraine’s only option for effective security is to join NATO, due to the failure of the Budapest Memorandum.
“But we don’t do…nuclear arms,” he stressed, adding that he would request that such a narrative be not propagated.
Rutte, in response to Zelensky’s remarks, reiterated that Ukraine would become a NATO Member but did not give a specific timetable.
Ukrainska Pravda, citing reliable sources, reported that the person in question was Iryna Alakhverdiieva, from the Servant of the People Party of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Department said that the two Chinese companies, Limbach and Redlepus, have been working together with IEMZ Kupol – a subsidiary of Almaz-Antey – a Kremlin-owned arms company – to create drones.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, wrote on X that Greece is ready to continue to meet Ukraine’s most urgent defence needs.
“Either Ukraine has nuclear weapons that will protect it, or they must be a part of an alliance.” “We do not know any other alliance that is as effective as NATO,” Volodymyr Zelensky told Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The legislation approved by the parliament in December was pushed through under pressure from Western partners as well as Ukrainian business associations. The reform is a necessary step towards Kyiv’s EU accession.
According to military intelligence, North Korean officials are already in the occupied territory of Ukraine.
“There will not be a war like the one of 1953.” I’m talking about the Korean War. It ended in summer of 2023 in Ukraine when two professional armies with more than a half million personnel each faced off on the battlefield,” said Valerii Zaluzhnyi. He is the current ambassador to the U.K. and former commander-in chief of Ukraine.
In response to a Kyiv Independent journalist, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.K. Valerii Zaluzhyni stated that Ukraine needed to change its approach to mobilisation because it still carries Soviet influences. However, much more time was required for a reform to be implemented, he said.
“We end up in a protracted state of war.” In my opinion, a protracted war is almost impossible to end, said Valerii Zaluzhnyi. He was Ukraine’s former commander in chief and newly appointed ambassador to the U.K.
On October 17, President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the victory plan included placing conventional missile capability in Ukraine, which would either force Russia into negotiations or destroy their military targets.
Dmytro Plenchuk, a Ukrainian Navy spokesperson, said that just because Russia deploys cruise missile carriers on the sea does not mean the ships will be used in an attack.
On October 17, President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Brussels to present his five point victory plan to Charles Michel, the president of the European Council.
The Ukrainian Southern Defense Forces revealed and attacked a Russian military training facility on October 15, posting footage of the attack.
The move was made after Russia and China blocked monitoring activities at United Nations. In March, Moscow vetoed a renewal of the panel of U.N. experts monitoring sanctions against Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile programs.
The German Air Force announced on October 16 that the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft of Germany were scrambled because a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft was flying over the international waters in the Baltic Sea.
The Air Force reported that Ukrainian air defenses destroyed 22 of the 65 attack robots launched overnight. Two drones flew towards Belarus and 27 were destroyed by electronic warfare.
Pokrovske coal mining is located 10 km (6miles) west of Pokrovsk. It is the largest coal mine in Ukraine, and one of the biggest in Eastern Europe.
This includes 1,420 casualties that Russian forces have suffered in the last day.
Nikita Klinkov, deputy commander of an intelligence unit for the Russian military (GRU), has been shot dead by an unknown assailant in Moscow Oblast, Russian state-controlled news reported on October 16.
The White House has rescheduled the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting for November in a virtually based setting, after U.S. president Joe Biden cancelled all his foreign trips this month due to the effects of multiple hurricanes at home.
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