A Russian missile attack on a military training center in Ukraine killed up to 190 people and injured 600, according to Ukrainian media and Telegram. The Swedish Defense and Government deny any killed Swedes, but just hours after the attack, the Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström resigned.
The dead and injured are said to include many Western mercenaries and NATO military advisers, including Swedes, in what may be the deadliest single attack in the Ukraine war.
Poltava is a historically famous city in central Ukraine, about 303 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
Among the dead are specialists in communications and electronic warfare for the Ukrainian armed forces in Poltava, according to reports from Ukraine.
Video footage from Ukraine is said to show the moment after a Russian Iskander missile strikes the 179th Signal Troops Training Centre in Poltava on 4 September.
Local media describe that dead soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were taken away in several lorries. The destroyed building is still being cleared of bodies, according to the Russian Telegram channel Intel Slava (@intelslava).
Russia reportedly attacked the education building first and, ten minutes later, the neighboring cafeteria as well.
Western media reported the attack, downplaying the number of dead and injured to only 50 people and that it was a hospital, according to both Russian and Ukrainian commentaries.
Sources report that three of the more significant number of soldiers killed in the Russian attack on a military training facility in Poltava, Ukraine, were Swedes. The Swedish Defense and Government deny it, but just hours after the attack, the Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström resigned without warning.
Billström was not the only minister to leave his post in the hours following that fateful day for NATO on 3 September 2024.
In the wake of the successful Russian attack, half a dozen ministers also resigned from their posts in the Zelensky regime in Kiev, among them Foreign Minister Dimitri Kuleba.
Reportedly, the professional relationship between Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Foreign Minister Tobias Billström has been strained for some time. Was it Kristersson’s demand that Billström deny in front of rolling cameras that three Swedish officers were among the dead in NATO’s proxy war against the Russian Federation?
NewsVoice has unsuccessfully sought the Foreign Minister and his press secretary, Anna Erhardt, for a comment.
Swedish Defence Forces spokesperson Theresa Fagerstedt on the report of dead Swedes in the Poltava attack:
”This is a typical example of what disinformation can look like and how quickly it can spread. The fact that people and authorities are exploited in attacks where people have lost their lives or been seriously injured is not something a malicious actor takes into account.”
The assumption that Swedish military personnel may have been at the military institute in Poltava at the time of the attack is not at all unreasonable. Quite the contrary.
Earlier in the summer, NewsVoice reported on the Swedish government’s decision to send the ASC 890 airborne combat management platform to Ukraine, where Ukrainians must first be trained. This is what the military institute was training in when two Russian missiles hit it at eight minutes past nine in the morning of September the third.
In the interview below, US Colonel Douglas Macgregor confirms his belief that three Swedish officers were killed in the Russian attack on the military institute in Poltava (at 6 minutes 43 seconds).
Macgregor:
”I think the big signal is, look, we are playing for keeps now. No more nonsense. We are coming, and we know exactly where you are because there were, as I recollect, three Swedish officers who had come onboard down in Poltava to teach people about their form of airborne control systems, and they were killed. So I think there was a message here for the Swedes, you want to join NATO? Welcome to the party’.
The last time Swedish officers were killed in Poltava was in 1709 during Charles XII’s fateful campaign against Russia, which marked the beginning of the end of the Swedish Great Power era, which lasted from 1611 to 1718.
On 6 September, the Swedish Minister of Defence, Pål Jonson, will meet his colleagues in the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Germany to discuss the countries’ continued support to Ukraine.
The government announced in a press release Thursday at 16:00 that Lloyd J. Austin, the US Secretary of Defence, and Rustem Umejrov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, will chair the twenty-fourth Ramstein meeting in the spring of 2022.
By Kristoffer Hell (and T. Sassersson)
References
- RT: Swedish foreign minister unexpectedly resigns
- Swedish Defense: Försvarsmakten dementerar uppgifter om omkomna försvarsmaktsanställda i Poltava
- TopCor: ВС РФ уничтожили в Полтаве группу инструкторов из Швеции, обучавших ВСУ работе с самолетами ДРЛО Saab 340 AEWCS
- BBC: Ukraine’s foreign minister resigns as government reshuffle expected
- NewsVoice: Vad händer om det svenska stridsledningsplanet dirigerar kärnvapenbestyckade F-16 in över Ryssland?
- Wikipedia: Slaget vid Poltava
The most obvious evidence of the effectiveness of the missile strike on Poltava was the swarm of NATO medical aircraft (USA, Germany, Poland, Romania).
They were evacuating both wounded instructors and the dead bodies. In cities like Berlin, police guarded convoys of… https://t.co/eLEFqtEWD3 pic.twitter.com/YGISZV4JMA
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) September 5, 2024