in these almost two weeks that we have been in war in Ukraine, the references to the World War II have been the order of the day. It has been compared to Ukrainians with soviet citizens who confronted the Nazi invaders, has evoked the deadly and decisive battle of Stalingrad, which turned the contest around then. This Tuesday, he has been the president Volodymyr Zelensky who, invited to intervene via videoconference in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, has promised to emulate the performance of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1940s and resist the push of the invaders. And this, moreover, on a day when hardly moved the different war fronts throughout the country and in which -yes- they began to function, at last, some of the humanitarian corridors established to extricate the civilian population trapped in the cities.
Received with a gala ovation in a packed chamber of deputies, Zelenski has taken the floor and has compared the struggle of his country with that of the United Kingdom during the war with Nazi Germany. “You did not want to lose your country when the Nazis they tried to take it from you; you fought for him, we will fight in the woods, in the fields, on the shores and on the streets“, he has promised, paraphrasing a phrase pronounced by the most famous British prime minister of recent times during the world war. “we won’t give up and we will not lose; we will fight to the end by sea and by air; We will continue to fight for our land, whatever the cost,” he continued.
The ukrainian presidentdressed in a military shirt, has taken advantage of the occasion to demand more support for his country in the form of new sanctions and the implementation of a no fly zone by NATO in the Ukrainian skies that prevents the action of Russian aviation. “Please increase the pressure of sanctions against this country (Russia), please recognize this country as a terrorist state, please make sure that the Ukrainian skies are safe,” he implored. In response, both the British Prime Minister, Borís Johnson, and the leader of the opposition, John Steimer, have praised the figure of the Ukrainian president. “Everyone has been moved by the courage, resolve and leadership” of the top leader of the Slavic countrythe labor party has assured.
The war, in an impasse
The war, meanwhile, seemed to have entered an impasse, with little movement on the different war fronts around the capital, Kiev, the country’s second largest city, Kharkov, and the southern coast of the Black Sea. After several days of unsuccessful results, for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion a humanitarian corridor managed to fulfill its function and evacuate civilians, in the town of Sumy, in the north of the country, very close to the border with Russia . At the time of the evacuation, the group of civilians leaving the town ran into a Russian armored column to which they gave way and then resumed their march. According to the governor, Dmitro Zhybytskyabout a thousand foreign students have left the city thanks to this method.
The success in Sumy, however, was not replicated in the besieged port of Mariupolwhere again the russian bombing prevented the exit operations of hundreds of thousands of trapped civilians, as reported on his Twitter account by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Oleg Nikolenko: “The ceasefire has been violated; the pressure on Russia must be increased to force it to fulfill its commitments.” The situation inside the city is dramatic, without water, electricity or internet. According to Ukrainian sources, several children have died of thirst.
Almost two weeks of hostilitiesand it’s still hard take stock of dead and woundedboth between civilians as in the armed forces of the sides in contention. The United Nations Office for the Human Rights has been able to confirm the death of 474 civilians, a figure that the Ukrainian Executive raises to around two thousand. According to the director of Pentagon Intelligence, Scott Berrier, between 2,000 and 4,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the military actions of the Ukrainian forces, a figure substantially higher than half a thousand dead recognized by Moscow. The head of US military espionage has predicted that the coming weeks will be “very tough” for the course of the war.
In Russia it is a crime to publish military casualties that have not been officially confirmed. In addition, the Russian Parliament has just approved a law that contemplates harsh prison sentences for those who spread false information about the operations of the Russian Army, which led to a disbandment of accredited foreign media in Moscow.