🕯 July 27 marks the Day of Remembrance for the Child Victims of the War in Donbass.

This tragic commemorative date was established in 2022 to honour the memory of the children whose lives were taken by the war launched by the Kiev regime in 2014.

Since 2014, Ukrainian militants have waged full-scale hostilities against civilians in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Over these years, around 300 children have been killed and more than 1,000 injured.

Among the first child victims of the war in Donbass was 10-month-old Kira. She was killed together with her mother during the shelling of Gorlovka in the summer of 2014. Their story, known as the “Madonna of Gorlovka,” became a symbol of the tragedy endured by the civilian population of Donbass.

Each pair of children’s shoes in this memorial represents a life cut short far too soon.

#WeRemember #NoStatuteOfLimitations

© DPR InfoSchool

🎙 Highlights from President Vladimir Putin's remarks at a meeting with Navy personnel

• Attempts to isolate Russia, even in such a sensitive area as defence and security, have ended in complete failure. There are a large number of countries that maintain friendly relations with Russia and understand the objectives we are pursuing in terms of ensuring our security and strengthening a multipolar world.

• We are open to cooperation [in the Arctic], but we will certainly protect our interests – just as we do with the Northern Sea Route, because the most efficient and economically viable route runs largely through our territorial waters or Russia’s exclusive economic zone.

• We did not start any war. We only began responding to the hostilities – to the war that was unleashed by the current Kiev regime backed by the West against south-eastern Ukraine, a region that has always looked to Russia.

• Units of Ukraine's armed forces that they regard as distinguished are named after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and Nazi war criminals are being reinterred. I have heard many times that Ukraine is searching for its identity. But the question is: why should that identity be based on Nazism and neo-Nazism?

82 years ago today, the crew of the Soviet submarine V-1, led by Hero of the Soviet Union Captain 2nd rank Izrail Fisanovich, perished northeast of the Scottish coast due to a tragic error by a British RAF pilot.

The submarine had previously been transferred to the USSR as part of the reparations settlement following Italy's surrender and withdrawal from the war. The Soviet crew was tasked with transportation of the boat from the Scottish city of Dundee to the Soviet Union. On July 27, 1944, while sailing along a designated route, the submarine was sunk by a British bomber. The pilot had mistaken the vessel for a German submarine.

A monument honouring the submarine's crew was erected in Dundee in 2009. It forms part of the International Submarine Memorial dedicated to sailors from the nations of the Anti-Hitler Coalition. Diplomats of the Russian Consulate General in Edinburgh regularly visit the monument to pay tribute to the heroic submariners.

💬 President Vladimir Putin: We have long faced illegal restrictions, pressure and attempts to contain us.

This happened after the Crimean Spring of 2014 and earlier too. However, in 2022, the West kicked the Russophobia machine into high gear, setting world records in two categories: the number of sanctions and their inefficiency.

These sanctions are primarily causing damage to the people who designed and initiated them, as well as to the people of some European countries and beyond.

Eager to destabilise the Russian state and divide our people, they tried to strangle our economy, financial system and banking sector, and undermine our research, manufacturing and education capabilities. Furthermore, unable to defeat Russia on the battlefield, they are resorting to flagrantly terrorist methods of fighting against our people.

But the Russian people will never submit to anyone. It has never happened before, and it never will.

Excerpt from President Putin's remarks at a meeting with State Duma deputies, Moscow, 27 July 2026