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Russian forces positioned themselves around Kiev yesterday and shelled civilian areas of other Ukrainian cities, including a hospital in Mikolaiv, and tightened the siege of Mariupol, a southeastern port city that has been besieged for two weeks and in which thousands of civilians are trapped. .
Russian bombardments ripped through Vasylkiv airport, some 40 kilometers south of Kiev, where a petrol depot caught fire, according to the city’s mayor.
The northwestern suburbs of the capital, such as Irpin and Busha, have been under Russian bombs for days, while Moscow’s armor advances along the northeastern axis.
The adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Mikhailo Podolyak, stated that the capital “is under siege.” The Ukrainian army indicated that the Russian troops focus their efforts in the capital, Mariupol and in several towns in the center, such as Krivoi Rog, Kremenchuk, Nikopol and Zaporizhia. Local media also indicated the activation of anti-aircraft sirens yesterday in Kiev, Odessa, Dnipro and Kharkov.
Situation “almost desperate” in Mariupol. After a 12-day siege, much of the attention is focused on Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, whose inhabitants are cut off from communication, without water, gas or electricity, and are even fighting for food. It is an “almost desperate” situation, warned Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
“The enemy is still blocking Mariupol,” Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said Friday night. “Russian troops have not let our aid into the city,” he criticized, promising to try once more to get supplies into the city.
“Besieged Mariupol is currently the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet: 1,582 civilians killed in 12 days, buried in mass graves like this one,” Ukraine’s chief diplomat Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet accompanied by a photo of a ditch with corpses.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the humanitarian situation is deteriorating “rapidly” in Ukraine and that some cities, confronted with Moscow’s military offensive, are experiencing a “catastrophic” situation.
“Unfortunately, the humanitarian situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate rapidly and in some cities has reached catastrophic proportions,” General Mikhail Mizintsev of the National Defense Control Center was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
The Russian official accused Ukrainian “nationalists” of planting mines in residential areas and destroying infrastructure, including roads and bridges, leaving the population without electricity, water, food and medicine.
Mosque. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said yesterday that Russian forces bombed the mosque of Sultan Solimán in Mariupol, where there were eighty refugee civilians, but one of those involved in the evacuation operations in that city denied it shortly following.
Speaking to the Turkish chain HaberTürk, Ismail Hacioglu, president of the association of that mosque, explained that the neighborhood where the mosque is located was being attacked but that the temple was not reached by fire.
“The Russians are bombing the area two kilometers from the mosque, and a bomb fell regarding 700 meters away,” Hacioglu said on Instagram. In addition, the person in charge specified that inside the mosque there were thirty Turkish citizens, “including children”, that his association had tried to evacuate four times, without success. “The Russians did not let us cross the barriers.” The Turkish government refused to react yesterday to reports of the bombing of the mosque.
Refugees welcomed “with tenderness”. Meanwhile, in the southern city of Mikolaiv, a hospital burned down and many of the residents had to flee. “They are attacking civilian areas, without any military objective,” hospital chief Dmytro Lagochev said. “There is a hospital, an orphanage and an eye clinic here,” he added.
The humanitarian crisis is worsening, with almost 2.6 million people exiled from Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, according to UN figures. To them must be added some 2 million internally displaced persons, said the head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi.
The largest exodus was to Poland, which, according to its border guard, has received 1.5 million people. These refugees “don’t feel like visitors. They have welcomed them into their families with tenderness, with brotherly kindness,” Zelensky said in a message praising the neighboring country.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the Ukrainian forces of “flagrant violations” of humanitarian law and asked his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to pressure Kiev to put finish.
He did so during a phone call yesterday with his two European peers, in which he mentioned “extrajudicial killings of opponents”, “hostage taking by civilians” and their “use as human shields”, according to a Kremlin statement.
Macron and Scholz also spoke by phone with Zelensky, the Ukrainian presidency reported yesterday, which indicated that the president asked them for help to free the mayor of the southern city of Militipol who, according to the Ukrainian authorities, would have been kidnapped by Russian soldiers the day before.
Trade restrictions. The United States and its Western allies continue to put economic pressure on Moscow, opening the door to punitive tariffs and reducing trade with the country.
The European Union and the G7 have joined the United States in revoking Russia’s “most favored nation” status, which facilitates the exchange of goods and services. In addition, US President Joe Biden announced a ban on imports of Russian fish, shellfish, vodka and diamonds.
On Friday, Macron had warned of more “massive sanctions” if Moscow intensifies the bombing or besieges Kiev, without ruling out even banning imports of hydrocarbons from Russia, on which the European energy market depends.
In addition to economic pressure, Western countries have sent military material to Ukraine, but are avoiding a direct confrontation between NATO and Moscow, which, in Biden’s words, would provoke “World War III.”
That material is sent in convoys that Russia warned yesterday might be attacked. “We have warned the United States that the delivery of weapons that they are orchestrating from a series of countries is not only a dangerous act, but also turns these convoys into legitimate targets,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned. .
And Zelenski, who has not tired of asking for more military support, sought luck with a call to mothers in Russia to prevent their children from being sent to war. “Check where your son is. And if you have the slightest suspicion that your son may have been sent to war once morest Ukraine, act immediately “to prevent him from being killed or captured,” he said in a video.
