News from Ukraine on June 15, 2023: Holodomor, training programme for the F-16 by July and more from Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant

This is the most interesting news from Ukraine on June 15, 2023

The Croatian government has supported the initiative of the Croatian parliament to recognise the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people. This is stated in a statement by Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkov. State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zdenko Lucic said that «by the proposed declaration, the Croatian parliament recognises the Holodomor – a violent famine deliberately organised by the communist Stalinist regime in Ukraine in 1932-1933 – as a crime of genocide against the Ukrainian people.»

Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov stated that the training programme for the F-16 will be developed by July and include more than just pilot training.

«When I say that a programme will be developed, it means that this programme will include not only pilot training. But their training will take 4-6 months. It’s not just pilots that are more difficult to train, it’s engineers, technicians, and mechanics. We can’t estimate how long it will take yet. Today we have been holding technical negotiations all day.

In general, there are at least six components: the infrastructure, we will know what it will be like and prepare it in parallel, including airfields, shelters and so on, the equipment that serves them, fuel and so on, spare parts, then mechanical engineers, then pilots, and then weapons,» explained Minister Reznikov.

After the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant was blown up, it is impossible to supply water to 583 thousand hectares, the editor-in-chief of latifundist.com, Konstantin Tkachenko commented for Hromadske Radio. According to him, the catastrophic consequences will affect the left bank, because «it’s even scary to think what we might see after de-occupation.» He also added that irrigation systems would no longer be available, and irrigated farming would be concentrated around rivers.