One of the goals of the Russian military is to establish full control over Donbass and southern Ukraine
a senior Russian military official said on Friday, speaking of a second phase of the special operation aimed, among other things, at ensuring a land corridor to Crimea.
Ukraine, which has obtained more substantial arms aid from the West in recent days, continues to assure that it can push Russian forces out of the country.
They can only delay the inevitable – the time when the invaders will have to leave our territory, especially Mariupol
said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday evening.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a video address on Thursday, April 21.
Photo: AP
This strategic port, which Moscow assured Thursday to have released
is still resisting Russian forces, according to kyiv, which said on Friday that Ukrainian fighters hold on
in the huge Azovstal metallurgical complex where civilians are also entrenched.
Civilians who will not be able to hope on Friday to take an evacuation corridor to find peace and security, the Ukrainian government judging the situation too dangerous
on the roads of the country.
I address all those who are waiting to be evacuated: wait, please hold on!
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told them on Telegram.
Ukrainian authorities regularly accuse Russian forces of targeting routes used by people fleeing the fighting.
In the temporarily occupied territories, enemy units continue to block the movement of the local population, steal and bring a humanitarian crisis closer. They are reducing critical infrastructure to rubble and blocking the delivery of humanitarian cargo from Ukraine. There are cases of civilians and volunteers shot
said Friday in its morning note the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
L’UN on Friday listed a series of actions by the Russian military that could, according to her, constitute war crimes.
Russian armed forces indiscriminately bombarded and shelled populated areas, killing civilians and destroying hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, all actions that may amount to war crimes
said Ravina Shamdasani, during a regular UN briefing in Geneva.
Recent satellite images published by the American company Maxar Technologies show, according to the company, the existence of a mass grave site in the northwest of Mangouch
a village 20 kilometers west of Mariupol.
In this village alone, the occupants would have buried between 3,000 and 9,000 residents
Mariupol City Hall said on Telegram.
They dig thirty-meter holes and bring the bodies of our residents of Mariupol in trucks
, said Thursday the mayor of the city, Vadim Boïtchenko, during a press briefing broadcast on YouTube. He estimated that Russian shelling had claimed at least 20,000 lives in Mariupol since the siege began.
Mr. Zelensky had estimated earlier, before the leaders of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank at 7 billion dollars a month the aid needed to compensate for the economic losses caused by the war.
A call partially heard. On Thursday, United States President Joe Biden announced $800 million in new military aid for Ukraine.
The Pentagon said this new tranche of aid included 72 Howitzer howitzers and their vehicles, 144,000 shells and 121 Phoenix Ghost killer drones.
On Thursday evening, Mr. Biden called big ambitions
by Vladimir Putin chess
.
Zelensky and his democratically elected government are still in power, and the Ukrainian armed forces accompanied by the valiant Ukrainian civilians have foiled the Russian conquest of their country
he wrote.
US President Joe Biden has announced an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine.
Photo: afp via getty images/JIM WATSON
This assertion was not enough to dispel the concerns of the Ukrainian president, who accused Russia of seeking to organize a fake independence referendum in the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia which it occupies in the south of the country.
In a video message, Mr. Zelensky asked residents of the occupied areas not to provide any personal data, such as their passport numbers, that would be required of them by the Russian forces.
It’s not fair to conduct a census. […] It is not to give you humanitarian aid of any kind. It is, in fact, to falsify a so-called referendum on your land, if the order to organize this comedy comes from Moscow
warned the Ukrainian president.
Ukraine had already accused, at the beginning of March, Russia of seeking to stage in Kherson a referendum
like the one which, in 2014, had sealed the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and which is considered illegal by kyiv and by Westerners.
Around the capital, makeshift graves discovered near a hospital in the devastated town of Borodianka have offered evidence to experts investigating war crimes charges against Russian troops.
Authorities said nine civilian corpses, many of them shot, were exhumed from these graves.
Investigators collected more than 1,000 bodies of civilians from streets, courtyards or makeshift graves around the Ukrainian capital, some of whom had their hands and feet tied or gunshot wounds to the back of their necks, officials said Thursday. responsible.
This investigation is part of the documentation of what Oleksandr Pavliuk, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, described asatrocities
committed following the invasion of Russian troops, who were subsequently forced to withdraw from the region.
