Moscow shows off its army on Monday to celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, a show of force to galvanize its struggling troops in Ukraine, where sixty civilians perished according to kyiv in the bombing of a school.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is due to deliver a long-awaited speech, will have the opportunity to send new warnings following repeatedly brandishing the nuclear threat.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the “plane of the Apocalypse”, an Ilyushin Il-80 designed to allow the Russian president to continue to pilot the country from the air in the event of nuclear war, will fly over Red Square, and several weapons that can fire nuclear missiles will also parade. Paratroopers who participated in the offensive in Ukraine should also be present, according to the state agency TASS.
Vladmir Putin multiplied Sunday the comparisons between the Second World War and the conflict in Ukraine in his wishes of May 8, ensuring in particular that “as in 1945, the victory will be with us”.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused his Russian counterpart of having “forgotten everything that was important for the victors” of 1945.
“Evil is back” in Europe, “in a different uniform, under different slogans, but with the same goal,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech commemorating the end of the world conflict in Europe, comparing the invasion of his country by Russia to the aggression of European states by Nazi Germany.
He blasted in a video message on Sunday evening “heavy shelling” in several Ukrainian regions, including one that resulted in the death of “60 civilians” on Saturday at a school in Bilogorivka, in the Lugansk region, “as if it were not not May 8 today, as if tomorrow was not May 9, when the key word should be peace for all normal people”.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified” by the bombardment, according to his spokesman.
The governor of the Lugansk region, Sergei Gaïdaï, had explained Sunday morning to Russian-language television Current Time TV that “there were a total of 90 people” on the spot at the time of the strike. “27 were saved,” he added, adding that the temperature had been very high following the explosion which “completely blew up” the school.
Disappointments
However, Russia has so far only been able to claim complete control of one major city, Kherson (south), and the military offensive that many experts predicted as dazzling has been marked by disappointments, in particular logistics.
After having failed at the gates of kyiv in the face of Ukrainian forces more motivated than expected and armed by the West, the Russian general staff had to revise its objectives downwards by tightening the offensive on the east and south of the country. .
“The enemy does not cease its offensive operations (…) in order to establish full control over the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions and to maintain the land corridor between these territories and Crimea occupied” by Russia since 2014, warned the General Staff of the Ukrainian army.
He said that in the Donetsk region, Russian troops had continued their attacks around Lyman, Popasniansky, Severodonetsk and Avdiivka, and that the Ukrainian military had withdrawn from the town of Popasna, now in ruins, to occupy “better position”.
The Russian Ministry of Defense also claimed Sunday the destruction of the “command post of a mechanized brigade” Ukrainian, in the region of Kharkiv (north-east), as well as the “communication center of the military aerodrome of Chervonoglinskoye”, in the southwest.
In Mariupol, a port in southeastern Ukraine almost entirely under Russian control, the Ukrainian soldiers who are still resisting in the huge Azovstal steelworks have ruled out surrendering. “Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our life. Leaving us alive does not matter to him,” said Ilya Samoilenko, an intelligence officer.
‘No more civilians in the steelworks’
In Zaporijjia (southeast), 174 civilians, some with young children, arrived Sunday evening on board eight buses “from the hell of Mariupol”, wrote on Twitter the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani. About forty evacuees came from the Azovstal steelworks.
According to her latest information, “there are no more civilians” in the steelworks, she told AFP, adding however that she “cannot verify it”.
Aid workers escorted elderly people, including an elderly lady in a wheelchair, to a reception centre.
“We were hoping for an evacuation every day,” said Vladymyr Babeush, 41, an evacuee from Azovstal who worked at the factory. “And now we are done waiting. We are so grateful to everyone involved.”
Another evacuee, Dmytro, 17, said he was “very tired” following seventeen hours on the bus. “But I’m happy because there’s fresh air and I’m in Ukraine,” he added.
Already on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky had launched: “we have evacuated the civilians of Azovstal”, citing the figure of 300 exfiltrated people. “We are now preparing the second phase (…): the wounded and the medical personnel”.
According to Yevgenia Tytarenko, a military nurse whose husband, a member of the Azov regiment, is still in the Azovstal factory, “many soldiers are in serious condition. They are injured and have no medicine”. “Food and water are also lacking.”
“Our units in the area of the Azovstal plant continue to be blocked,” the Ukrainian general staff said on Sunday, referring to “Russian assault operations” with “the support of artillery and fire of tanks”.
Weaning from Russian oil
Western powers have also renewed their support for Ukraine.
The United Kingdom announced Sunday evening export bans targeting Russian industry and the increase in customs tariffs, in particular on palladium and platinum.
The G7, meeting virtually on Sunday, decided on a “gradual” withdrawal from Russian oil. “The entire G7 today pledged to ban or phase out imports of Russian oil,” the White House said in a statement. This decision “will deal a blow to the main artery irrigating Putin’s economy and deprive him of the income he needs to finance his war”.
At the level of the European Union, negotiations will continue at the beginning of the week between member states to remove the obstacles to the proposed European embargo on Russian oil, hampered by Hungary.
US First Lady Jill Biden met with her Ukrainian counterpart Olena Zelenska at a school in Ukraine, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a surprise visit to Irpin, a town in the suburbs of kyiv devastated by the fighting.
