“We see sabotage attempts and shelling by Ukrainian forces against positions on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
“If these events continue, the Russian military will attack decision-making centers, including in kyiv, which the Russian military has refrained from doing so far,” he added.
This Wednesday, the Ukrainian forces claimed responsibility for an attack on the Russian cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea. “The Neptune missiles monitoring the Black Sea caused very serious damage to the Russian ship,” said Odessa Governor Maksym Marchenko.
Later, the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that the ship was “seriously damaged” by a fire that blew up its ammunition. The crew was evacuated and the causes of the event are being determined, he said, quoted by state agencies.
The Ukrainian capital has been free of fighting since the end of March with the withdrawal of Russian troops from that region, which gave way to images that shocked the world, such as the dozens of civilians killed in Bucha.
This town received the visit of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, who considered that Ukraine was the “scene of a crime” where they could be “committing crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court”.
– “Capabilities to defend oneself” –
Since its withdrawal from the outskirts of kyiv, Russia has focused its offensive on the east and south of the country. The Pentagon indicated that it will be a different battle, with the Russian forces less dispersed and in an area “flatter and more open” than the north.
For this reason, the new package includes “very effective equipment that we have already delivered” to Ukraine, but also “new capabilities”, among which “artillery systems” and “armored means of transport” stand out, the US government said.
Among them are state-of-the-art artillery pieces such as the M777 Howitzer cannons, 40,000 howitzers, 300 “kamkaze” drones, 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, anti-artillery and anti-aircraft radars, 200 armored transport vehicles, 100 light armored vehicles and 11 Mi-17 helicopters. Russian.
Biden announced the new tranche of aid during an hour-long call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelensky, with whom he promised to “provide Ukraine with capabilities to defend itself.”
The day before, the US president had described Russia’s actions in Ukraine for the first time as “genocide”, an accusation joined on Thursday by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Colombian President Iván Duque.
In Europe, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, preferred not to use that term, an attitude that Zelensky described as “very painful”.
– The Battle of Mariupol –
Despite the various rounds of negotiations between the two parties, the UN considered that a “general ceasefire” for humanitarian purposes “does not seem possible at present” and continues to await responses from Moscow to its specific proposals for the evacuation of civilians and the sending of humanitarian aid to combat zones.
One of these regions is Mariupol, a strategic city in southeastern Ukraine where at least 20,000 people have died, according to kyiv authorities.
Russian forces have been bombing the town for more than 40 days and, according to the Ukrainian presidency, “90% of the houses” have been destroyed.
Conquering Mariupol would be an important victory for the Russians, since it would allow them to consolidate their territorial advances on the coast of the Sea of Azov, uniting the Donbas region (eastern Ukraine), controlled in part by pro-Russian separatists, with Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
The city’s surrender seems inevitable to some military experts, but Ukrainian forces are still holding out.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that a thousand Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered in that city, where the resistance is now concentrated in the vast metallurgical complex of Azovstal, until now a bastion of the Ukrainian forces.
AFP journalists who were able to enter the city alongside Russian forces saw the charred ruins of Mariupol.
Since the beginning of the week there have been rumours, so far unconfirmed, of the use of chemical weapons by Russian soldiers in this city, rejected by Moscow.
– “It is not a war, it is terrorism” –
The bombings affect other parts of the east of the country. In the city of Kharkov, also besieged by the Russians since the beginning of the invasion, at least four civilians were killed and 10 wounded on Wednesday, according to the regional governor.
“This is not a war, this is terrorism,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said during a visit to kyiv. “If someone sends planes and soldiers to bomb residential areas and kill civilians, it’s not a war. It is cruelty, banditry, terrorism,” he added.
For his part, the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda, visited Borodianka, half an hour’s drive from the capital, an area “permeated with pain and suffering.”
Ukrainian authorities have called on civilians to flee the east as soon as possible amid fears of an imminent Russian push for full control of Donbas, where the army has been battling pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
In total, more than 4.65 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, according to the latest figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). To them are added more than 7 million internally displaced persons.
Analysts believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin, faced with fierce Ukrainian resistance, wants to secure a victory in the east before the May 9 military parade in Red Square, which commemorates the Soviet victory against the Nazis in 1945.
In this sense, the head of one of the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian separatist “republics”, Leonid Pasechnik, assured that his troops already controlled “between 80 and 90%” of the Lugansk region.
Affected by numerous international sanctions, Russia announced on Wednesday that it will ban 398 members of the US Congress from entering its territory, in retaliation for a similar measure adopted by Washington.
