Russian forces continue their attacks in eastern and southern Ukraine, focusing on areas around Kharkiv in the northeast, where the Russian army is trying at all costs to increase its control, despite, according to Kyiv, the Russian retreat in field.
Strong explosions erupted last night from Friday to Saturday in this city, the second largest in the country, which has been pounded for weeks by Russian artillery.
On Friday, at least one person was killed and several others were injured Russian bombingsaccording to the Kharkiv regional military administration.
Earlier in the day, Russia said its artillery units had hit 389 targets in Ukraine overnight. Among them, 35 checkpoints, 15 depots of weapons and ammunition, but also many areas of concentration of Ukrainian military forces and their armament. The Russian Defense Ministry announced that Russian missiles hit four warehouses of ammunition and fuel.
Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the situation in the northeastern region was “difficult”, with Russian forces refocusing their offensive campaign. However, the Ukrainian president stressed that “our army is achieving regular successes”, despite the contrary assessments of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“The special military operation launched on February 24 is continuing according to plan,” Lavrov said in an interview with China’s Xinhua news agency, published today, adding that all of Moscow’s goals “will be achieved despite the obstruction of our opponents.”
The head of Russian diplomacy blamed the West – and NATO in particular – that it stands in the way of reaching a political agreement to end the war in Ukraine, urging Kiev’s western allies to stop arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Military aid to the Ukrainian government has increased significantly since the start of the war.
US President Joe Biden last Thursday called on Congress to release another $ 33 billion to Ukraine, of which $ 20 billion will go to military aid, $ 8.5 billion will go as direct financial assistance to the Ukrainian government and remaining 3 billion as humanitarian and food aid.
Results of this military aid are beginning to be seen on the battlefield. Ukrainian forces have recaptured Ruska Lozova, a village north of Kharkiv. The village was liberated after heavy fighting and more than 600 residents were evacuated, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
“Like hell”
“We lived two scary nights, like hell … The penultimate night we thought the sky was on fire, the whole village was burning,” 23-year-old Svetlana Perepilitsa told AFP.
“We lived in the basement without food for two months, we ate what we had,” said Sviatoslav, 40, his eyes red with fatigue.
In the Donbas region, which the Kremlin has set out to take over completely, “the occupiers are doing everything they can to eradicate all forms of life,” Zelensky said. wants to make this area uninhabitable “.
In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, 14 attacks were launched by Russian forces repulsed the last 24 hours, announced today Saturday the general staff of the Ukrainian forces.
And for Washington, the Russian operation in Donbass, which is proceeding “slowly and unevenly” due to the resistance of the Ukrainian army, has been delayed, according to the schedule originally planned, a high-ranking Pentagon official claimed today.
“We believe that they (the Russians) are late in what they hoped to achieve in Donbass,” he told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They are several days late,” he explained. “They are still far from uniting” the forces that entered Ukrainian territory from the Kharkiv region, north of Donbass, with those that came from the south. This was a goal of the Russian army to cut off the Ukrainian forces that have developed on the front line, around the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
“They are not promoted very quickly. “A few kilometers a day is the maximum they can do, because they are repulsed by the Ukrainian army,” he said. But “we believe that they continue to create the conditions for a lasting, bigger and longer attack,” he added.
To show their determination, Russian forces bombed Kyiv on Friday during Antonio Guterres’s visit to the Ukrainian capital, the UN Secretary-General’s first visit since the start of the Russian invasion.
The bombing left ten people dead and at least one dead: Vira Girich, a Ukrainian producer of Radio Liberty. “Vira Girich was killed by a Russian missile in the apartment building where she lived,” US-funded Radio Liberty said on its website. The body of the Ukrainian producer was found today under the wreckage, clarified by the same source.
“Brutal humiliation”
Kyiv called the Russian bombing of Kyiv a “heinous act of barbarism” in the wake of Guterres’ visit.
Germany and France strongly condemned the bombings, with Berlin stressing that these blows showed once again “that (Vladimir) Putin and his regime do not respect international law.”
THE Zelenskyexpressed his regret in a speech on Friday night, “that such a brutal and deliberate humiliation of the United Nations went unanswered.”
Washington, for its part, has accused Putin of “desecration” and “cruelty” over the way Russian forces are operating in Ukraine.
The UN secretary-general traveled to Bukhara and other locations near Kyiv on Thursday, where Ukraine accused Russian forces of committing war crimes and urged Moscow to “cooperate” with the ICC’s investigation into possible war crimes.
At the same time, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine announced that a preliminary investigation has been launched against ten Russian soldiers suspected of committing war crimes in Bukhara.
The attorney general said via Twitter that the investigation targeted ten soldiers of the 64th Motorized Brigade, which belongs to the 35th Army, “for brutal treatment of civilians and other violations of the law of war.”
According to this investigation, Russian soldiers, during the occupation of Bouka, in March, “held hostage civilians who did not take part in hostilities and were not armed. The conquerors gave them neither food nor water. “
This is the first time a war crimes investigation has been launched in Bouka since the bodies of 20 politically dressed men were found on a city street on April 2, a worldwide outcry.
The Ukrainians accuse the Russians of war crimes, but Moscow denies any responsibility and claims that the Buka massacre was “directed” by Kyiv.
A total of “more than 8,000 cases” of alleged war crimes have been identified in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.
In this context, British Foreign Secretary Liz Tras said on Friday that researchers would be sent from the United Kingdom to assist their Ukrainian counterparts in the investigation.
In Mariupol, a new civilian evacuation operation was scheduled for Friday. The UN coordinator in Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani, said on Thursday that she would go to southern part of Ukraine to prepare for this new civilian evacuation effort.
Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians remain trapped in underground galleries at the huge Azovstal steel plant.
Agence France-Presse reporters heard heavy bombardment of Azofstal from Friday morning until midnight. Smoke was rising in the sky of the industrial zone.
On the diplomatic front, while the Russian president was invited like his Ukrainian counterpart to the G20 summit scheduled for November in Indonesia, the United States said it refused to treat Putin “as if nothing had happened.”
Earlier in the day, Vladimir Germakov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which is in charge of non-proliferation and nuclear control, told the TASS news agency that the dialogue between Moscow and Washington “These contacts can be reactivated as soon as Russia considers its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine complete.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
