Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today mocked a statement by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that the war he was waging went according to the “plan” of his staff, wondering what plan he was talking about when Russia suffers such heavy losses in Ukraine.
Mr Putin assured on Tuesday that Moscow would achieve all its “noble” goals as it continued “rhythmically and calmly” what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” on Ukrainian territory.
“Russia has been told once again that what is being called a ‘special operation’ is going to go ahead as planned. “But to be honest, no one in the world fully understands how this plan came to them,” Zelenski said during an evening sermon that was uploaded to the Telegram platform today.
“How exactly was a plan conceived that predicts the death of tens of thousands of their soldiers in just over a month? “Who exactly approved it?” continued ironically the Ukrainian president.
He wondered how many deaths of Russian soldiers Mr. Putin would consider acceptable losses, describing a range of tens to hundreds of thousands. Moscow, he said, lost in 48 days more than the men it mourned during the ten-year war in Afghanistan (1979-1989).
Mr Zelensky’s government claims that Russia has suffered some 20,000 casualties in the war.
The latest official announcement from Moscow was made on March 25th. He spoke of 1,351 dead since February 24.
Mr Zelensky acknowledged that despite ridiculing the Russian president and his generals, the failures of the Russian army and its inferior technology, his country’s opponent was not insignificant. “We have to understand that not all Russian tanks have been stuck in the fields, not all the soldiers are firing from the fronts, not all the soldiers are drawn who do not even know how to hold their weapons,” he said. “This does not mean that we should be afraid of them, it means that we should not degrade the achievements of our fighters, our army,” he hastened to add.
At the same time, Mr. Zelensky admitted that he could not say with 100% certainty that Russia had used chemical weapons in Mariupol, because no investigation could be carried out in the strategically important port of southern Ukraine as hostilities raged. Nevertheless, he argued that repeated threats by some in Russia that such weapons would be used meant that the West must take action now to prevent that from happening. He did not become more specific.
In Mariupol, the governor of Danetsk, Pavlo Kirilenko, said yesterday, speaking on the American television network CNN, “we can say that 20 to 22,000 people were killed”.
Earlier, he spoke of 10,000 dead in the city, which is cut off from the rest of the country and bombed for more than 40 days. He admitted that it was “difficult to estimate the exact number of victims” in the besieged city.
Through Telegram, the governor Kirilenko stated that “street fights” are raging “day and night” in Mariupol and that he has only “minimal” contacts in the city.
Adviser to the Ukrainian presidency Mikhail Podoliak stressed on Twitter that “Ukrainian soldiers are surrounded and blocked” in the city, where “90% of the houses” have been destroyed.
The occupation of Mariupol would allow the Russian army to consolidate its territorial gains in the coastal zone of the Sea of ​​Azov and connect Donbass with the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
The Russian military also said it had prevented an attempt by about a hundred Ukrainian soldiers with armor to break the cordon at a factory in the northern part of the city on Monday.
In eastern Ukraine, the full conquest of which is now a priority for Moscow, Kyiv has said it expects an immediate large-scale offensive. “According to our information, the enemy has almost completed its preparations for the attack” in Donbas and it is expected to begin “very soon,” said Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanik. The civilians continue to leave Lugansk and Danieck, especially with six trains that were to leave yesterday.
Analysts say Vladimir Putin wants a victory in Donbass by May 9, the day of the military parade in Red Square to mark the anniversary of the Soviets’ victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
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