News from Ukraine on June 21, 2023: russian countermeasures, huge military assistance from Latvia and more russian propaganda in schools

This is the most interesting news from Ukraine on June 21, 2023 by Hromadske Radio.

The Russians are taking countermeasures on the Kupyansk and Lyman directions to prevent possible successes and actions regarding the Ukrainian offensive from being justified and to prevent the Ukrainian military from being able to implement them.

This was reported on Hromadske Radio by Ivan Yakubets, a retired colonel and commander of the Ukrainian Airborne Forces in 1998-2005. «Now the Russians are trying their offensive actions, and this is a very dangerous situation for us, because a lot depends on the scale of these actions, including the possibility of our counter-offensive or offensive,» Yakubets said.

Latvia has already provided Ukraine with military assistance worth more than 1% of its GDP, including the transfer of all available portable air defence systems «Stinger», and is preparing to complete the transfer of all its helicopters. This was stated by Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karinš at an international conference on the restoration of Ukraine in London.

At the beginning of his speech, he pointed out that «Latvia has never had any illusions about Russia,» and therefore, against the backdrop of Russia’s military build-up near the Ukrainian border, it was decided to send Stinger surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine in November-December 2021.

In the temporarily occupied Berdiansk and Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia, children are being forced to write letters to the Russian invaders. This was reported by the National Resistance Centre.

«In the temporarily occupied territories, the occupation administration is forcing children in school camps to write letters to the Russian invaders through controlled teachers. In particular, the letters were written centrally in the camps of Berdiansk and Melitopol. The children did so under the recording of propagandists. The letters themselves were copied from a ‘copy’ and dictated by Russian teachers who were brought to the region,» the statement said.

The Russians have turned schools into propaganda centres and are fining parents who do not send their children to these «schools» and threatening them with deprivation of parental rights, the CNS reports.