We are Preparing Meetings and Documents That Will Definitely Make It Into the News in the Coming Weeks
- Address by the President
7 May 2024 - 22:05
Dear Ukrainians!
A summary of this day. First, the frontline. The battles in the hottest spots. Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, Kramatorsk, Lyman, Vremivka, Kupyansk directions. Today, as always, I communicated with the military and held a separate meeting with the Ministry of Defence regarding the manning of our brigades. We are doing everything we can to strengthen our warriors and give Ukraine more power in combat. I thank everyone in the world who is helping us. I am grateful to all the leaders who are really keeping their word and fulfilling what we agreed upon — all the supply packages of weapons and ammunition are extremely important for Ukraine now. This time is crucial for the whole year — in combat, in training, in supply. Any delay now — in weapons, ammunition or in manning our brigades — will cost too much for all those in the world who seek actual protection from Russia. And I thank every combat brigade of ours — all those who are fighting on the front line — and doing it effectively and bravely without surrendering their positions. Thank you for being here for Ukraine. And today, based on the results of the first days of the week, the warriors of the 55th Zaporizhzhia Sich separate artillery brigade deserve our special appreciation. Good job, guys! Your accuracy is always inspiring!
The second thing today is international negotiations.
We continue our marathon of preparations for the first Global Peace Summit, a Summit that can and should demonstrate the value of international cooperation and all the words about upholding the UN Charter and the rules-based international order — those words that have been heard during the years of this war.
Every leader who will participate in the Summit, every leader who is now helping to organize the Summit, every state whose strength we are adding now to the joint force of human life protection will definitely prove their worth in this marathon — in the preparations of the Peace Summit.
Today I spoke with the leaders of Spain, Belgium, Latvia, Finland and Cabo Verde. Step by step, we will establish a truly global community — every continent will be represented at our Summit in Switzerland, different nations — both geographically large and geographically smaller, those who have already clearly expressed their support for international law and the ones who are yet to do so.
While Moscow is using the term “multipolarity” just hypocritically to cover its attempts to control the lives of other nations, we are creating a real tool for real multipolarity — we are inviting the world majority to the Peace Summit.And it is the majority that should have its say — it can bring a just peace closer.
And one more thing for today.
We are preparing meetings and documents that will definitely make it into the news in the coming weeks.
New visits of our partners to Ukraine.
New security agreements for our country and life in Europe in general.
And of course, we continue to prepare for the actual start of talks with the European Union in June.
From our side, the Ukrainian side, all the details will be one hundred percent worked out.
Ukraine has fulfilled its obligations.
And Ukraine expects the same level of engagement — productive engagement — from the partners.
I thank everyone who stands with Ukraine and everyone who supports us in an effective and timely manner!
Because this means life.
This means saving lives.
I thank everyone who fights for our country and our people.
And please always remember all those who sacrifice their lives in this battle — the battle for Ukraine and humanity.
May the memory of each of our warriors, whose lives were lost in battle and became the life of our entire state, our Ukraine, be bright and eternal.
Ukrainian authorities on May 7 alleged that they had caught two colonels in the government protection unit allegedly plotting the assassination of President Volodymyr Zelensky. The suspects allegedly received drones and ammunition from Russian security agency FSB. Other top Ukrainian officials were also on the alleged hit list. Watch the full video for more.
Two Ukrainian officials arrested over alleged plot to kill Zelensky
Kiev has reported exposing a “network of agents” preparing assassination attempts on top state officials
Two officers of the State Security Administration who were allegedly part of a conspiracy to assassinate top government and military officials were arrested on Tuesday, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has announced. The agency, which is Kiev’s successor to the Soviet-era KGB, claimed in a post on Telegram that the two suspects were planning to kill Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, SBU head Vasily Malyuk, and the national intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov, among others.
The Strana news outlet has identified the detainees as the head of the State Security Administration, Andrey Guk, and his colleague, surnamed Derkach.
Both are said to have been arrested simultaneously on Saturday.
The SBU says the men were agents of a network which it alleges was being orchestrated from Moscow, and were conducting surveillance of Zelensky and other government officials with intent to coordinate a missile strike and a kamikaze drone attack on them. Guk was specifically accused of collecting and transmitting classified information on protected persons, including Zelensky. The assassinations of some of the officials were reportedly supposed to take place before Orthodox Easter on May 5, with the murder of Zelensky supposedly being planned as a “gift to Putin before his inauguration” on Tuesday, Malyuk claimed in a statement quoted by the SBU. The detainees have been charged with treason and preparing a terrorist attack and now face life in prison.
The alleged murder plot is just the latest the SBU has reportedly uncovered. Last month, the service also claimed that a suspect in Poland was transmitting information about the security of a Polish airport to Russian spies with the goal of orchestrating an assassination attempt on Zelensky during his visit to the country. Polish authorities later said that the man, named Pawel K., had been arrested and charged with “readiness to act for foreign intelligence against the Republic of Poland.” Moscow has not yet commented on the latest assassination plot accusations. However, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that the incident in Poland indicated that Kiev’s Western backers were looking to get rid of Zelensky.
“An attempt on the life of the chief Banderite [Zelensky] in Poland? That is truly serious,”Medvedev commented in response to the arrest of the Polish man. “It may be the first piece of evidence that people in the West have made a decision to liquidate him. Be afraid, clown!”
Since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Zelensky has repeatedly told Western media that Russia has been trying to kill him, with multiple attempts supposedly prevented by his security detail. However, according to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Vladimir Putin personally assured him in March 2022 that Moscow would not kill Zelensky.
Amid a critical shell shortage, Ukrainian artillery units are playing a cat-and-mouse game to avoid Russian drones hunting high-value weapons like a self-propelled Panzerhaubitze 2000
The Republican politician, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, says the trial is an attempt to hobble his attempt to win back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.
Jail time for contempt could spell political trouble for Trump
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before departing Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York, U.S. Julia Nikhinson/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo , opens new tab
WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) - If the judge overseeing Donald Trump's hush money trial is to be taken at his word, America could be careening toward an unprecedented moment: A former U.S. president behind bars. Justice Juan Merchan on Monday threatened Trump with jail time for repeatedly violating a gag order in the criminal case underway in Manhattan, although Merchan said it is a step he is reluctant to take. Jailing Trump would almost certainly inflame his already loyal base of supporters and in their minds further Trump's narrative that he is being politically persecuted, an argument that helped him win the 2024 Republican nomination.
But being jailed - even for a brief time - would remind other voters of the chaos that has routinely followed Trump, including the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, several political analysts said.
That could be particularly damaging for Trump with voters who remain undecided between him and Democratic President Joe Biden and are just tuning into the race with six months to go before the November election, the analysts said. . .
RELATED
Stormy Daniels testifies of chaos once Trump hush money deal became public
Tue, May 7, 2024
By Luc Cohen, Jack Queen and Andy Sullivan
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Porn star Stormy Daniels testified on Tuesday that her life descended into “chaos” after her hush-money deal with Donald Trump to stay silent about their alleged sexual encounter was made public, saying she was ostracized and harassed at her home.
“My husband asking questions, my friends asking questions,” Daniels testified on Day 13 of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. “It blew my cover, for lack of a better way to explain it.” She told the New York jury about the alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump and the $130,000 hush money payment she secured when he ran for president in 2016.
Daniels said she was worried he would not pay her if he won the November 2016 election. Jurors saw documents that showed she canceled the deal in mid-October but later revived it.
She said she honored the agreement by telling the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that she had not had sex with Trump. Nevertheless, the Journal published the story.
Daniels, 45, said she was determined to keep the incident private after being threatened in a parking lot in 2011 but changed her mind during Trump’s 2016 presidential bid when he faced multiple accusations of sexual misbehavior.
“My motivation wasn’t money, it was to get the story out,” she said.
Trump, 77, who is the Republican candidate for president again this year, did not react as he watched her testimony from the witness stand. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of falsifying business records to cover up the hush money payment to Daniels and denies ever having sex with Daniels.
His legal team has suggested that Daniels made up the story as she was angling for a spot on “The Apprentice,” a popular reality TV show then hosted by Trump, a New York real estate mogul.
Daniels confirmed that she hoped he would cast her on the show following their encounter.
After a lunch break, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche moved for a mistrial, arguing that her testimony was irrelevant to a case about business records and would only “inflame” the jury.Justice Juan Merchan denied his request.
‘ONLY WAY YOU’RE GETTING OUT OF THE TRAILER PARK’ Daniels said Trump made sexual advances after inviting her to his hotel suite at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
She said he told her “this is the only way you’re getting out of the trailer park.”
Daniels testified she grew up as the daughter of a low-income single mother.
Daniels said she “blacked out” despite consuming no drugs or alcohol after Trump prevented her from leaving the room by blocking the door. She said she woke up on the bed with her clothes off. “I was staring at the ceiling and didn’t know how I got there, I was trying to think about anything other than what was happening there,” Daniels testified. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she did not tell Trump to stop.
“I didn’t say anything at all,” she said.
She said she left the hotel room quickly afterward.
The Republican politician, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, says the trial is an attempt to hobble his attempt to win back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election. Wearing a black outfit and black glasses, Daniels testified that she worked in strip clubs and pornography after a childhood in which her single mother was often gone for days at a time.
SATIN PAJAMAS AND A SPANKING She said Trump greeted her at his hotel suite wearing satin pajamas. She said she grew annoyed by Trump’s frequent interruptions and asked him: “Are you always this arrogant and pompous?” Trump then dared Daniels to spank him with a magazine and she obliged. “He was much more polite after that,” she said. “That’s bullshit,” Trump appeared to say as he watched from the defendant’s table. The alleged encounter took place while Trump was married to his current wife, Melania.
Daniels said she confided in only a few people about the sex. She said she saw Trump at public events on several occasions in the years that followed, but then fell out of touch with him after he did not put her on the show. She said she was approached in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 by a man who warned her not to speak about the encounter. “I was scared and I didn’t want anything else about the story to come out,” she said. She said she changed her mind during Trump’s 2016 bid and ultimately negotiated a $130,000 payment with Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen. Prosecutors say Trump falsified business records to obscure the fact that he reimbursed Cohen for the payment. They say that amounts to an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 election by buying the silence of people with potentially damaging information. The case is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal prosecutions Trump faces, but it is the only one certain to go to trial before the election. The other cases charge Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all three.
(Reporting by Jack Queen and Luc Cohen in New York and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)
While much of the New York case has involved dry details about financial
bookkeeping, on Tuesday it took a sharp return to tabloid sex and
scandal. Daniels shed light on allegations she has made about her
relationship with Trump, the alleged hush money plan, and her claims
that she was threatened to keep quiet about their affair.
Trump, in a now deleted social media post, appeared furious that she was taking the stand.
Stormy Daniels attends the Grammy Awards in February 2007, months after
she first met Donald Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe,
California. | Matt Sayles/AP
Porn star and director. Former stripper. And now, witness for the prosecution.
Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is
Stephanie Clifford, had a lucrative career as a porn star before an
alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump almost two decades ago
changed her life and, arguably, the course of American politics. That
moment is at the heart of the former president’s hush money trial. Tuesday
was the first time Daniels and Trump have been in the same room since
allegations were made public about a hush money payment, and after years
of the two trading crass insults and being involved in legal battles.
In
2016, Daniels was paid $130,000 by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael
Cohen to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she allegedly had with
Trump a decade prior. The Wall Street Journal broke the news about the hush money payment
in 2018 and reported it was made just weeks away from the 2016
presidential election and in the wake of the release of the shocking
Access Hollywood tape.Daniels was one of the most recognizable porn stars in the adult
entertainment industry and had made cameo appearances in films like “The
40-Year-Old Virgin”and“Knocked Up” when she first met Trump at a
celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California in July 2006. They
are photographed together at the event. According to Daniels, the
then-real estate mogul and TV star was impressed by the fact that she
was also a film director, and invited her to dinner and the encounter
happened inside a hotel room, according to Daniels. She was 27 at the
time and Trump was 60, and his wife, Melania Trump, had recently given
birth to their only son Barron. Trump has denied having sex.
According
to Daniels, she and Trump kept in touch and then met again in a
bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles where she expected to
discuss a promise Trump made to cast her on his hit NBC show, “The
Celebrity Apprentice.”
They did not have sex, according to Daniels, and
Trump later called to inform her she would not be on the show. It was
the last time they saw each other.
Then,
in 2011, In Touch Weekly called Daniels and said they were considering
publishing her story.
She described a chilling moment weeks after her
discussions with In Touch Weekly when a man approached her in a parking
lot in Las Vegas and threatened her to “leave Trump alone, forget the
story.”
The tabloid then seemed to drop the story.
Later,
in 2016, as Trump and his presidential campaign was dealing with the
fallout from the Access Hollywood tape and allegations of sexual
assault, Daniels was approached about signing a non-disclosure agreement
and receiving a check for $130,000 to keep her story out of the press.
Daniels told 60 Minutes she agreed to take the payment because“the story was coming out again. I was concerned for my family and their safety.”
Since
then, the two have been battling in courtrooms and exchanging at times
coarse taunts.
Daniels sued Trump alleging a non-disclosure agreement
she signed is not binding because it was never signed by Trump, and has
sued Trump for defamation but that suit was dismissed.
“Great,
now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer,”Trump tweeted
about Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, at the time. Daniels,
in reply, insulted Trump’s physical “shortcomings.”
The porn star has been responsible for taking down several powerful men, from Avenatti to Cohen.
Daniels and Avenatti, the brash celebrity attorney, dramatically went separate ways after she sued him and won.
Avenatti was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for embezzling $297,500 from Daniels as part of a book deal.
Cohen
pleaded guilty to eight counts including tax fraud and campaign finance
violations related to keeping Daniels and model Karen McDougal from
making public claims of extramarital affairs with Trump ahead of the
2016 election and served time in prison.
While Daniels’ story has brought her
added notoriety, she has openly — and emotionally — discussed how going
public with her claims about Trump has caused her personal pain and
death threats that only escalated after the former president was
indicted last year.
“Back in 2018, there was stuff like ‘liar, s***, gold digger,’”she said in a documentary
about her life called “Stormy.”
“This time around, it is very
different. It is direct threats. It is ‘I’m going to come to your house
and slit your throat.’”
