People are preparing to board an evacuation train leaving for Lviv, a day after arriving as part of a humanitarian convoy from the besieged city of Mariupol, at the railway station in the southern city of Zaporozhye on April 22.ED JONES / AFP / Getty Images
Moscow wants to take full control of southern Ukraine, a Russian general said on Friday, a statement that Ukraine said was lying to Russia’s previous claims that it had no territorial ambitions.
Rustam Minekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s Central Military District, was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying that full control of southern Ukraine would give it access to the breakaway, Russian-occupied part of Moldova to the west.
This would cut off the entire coast of Ukraine and mean pushing hundreds of miles west beyond the current lines, past the great Ukrainian cities of Nikolaev and Odessa.
Moscow says it is conducting a “special military operation” to demilitarize Ukraine and free its population from what it calls dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia’s invasion is an unjustified aggressive war.
“They stopped hiding it,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Twitter. Russia has acknowledged that the goal of the “second phase” of the war is not to defeat the mythical Nazis, but simply to occupy eastern and southern Ukraine. Imperialism as it is. ”
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on whether Russia has expanded the objectives of its operation and how Moscow sees the political future of southern Ukraine.
A senior EU official said the next few weeks are likely to be crucial.
“This is not a fairy tale with an inevitable happy ending. “I think we are likely to see a very significant increase in the intensity of Russian military attacks in the east, I think we are likely to see an increase in Russian military attacks along the coast,” the official told reporters.
The General Staff of Ukraine said that Russian forces have increased attacks along the entire front line in the east and are trying to organize an offensive in the Kharkiv region, north of its main target, the southeastern region of Donbass.
Russia’s Defense Ministry says its forces have seized a large arms depot in the Kharkiv region. He also said he hit dozens of targets in the Donetsk and Kharkiv districts on Friday.
In the city of Kharkov, Russian shelling hit the main market Barabashovo. The ambulance said there were casualties, but no details have been released. A wedding hall and a residential building were also affected.
MURAT YUKSELIR / GLOSS AND POST, SOURCE: GRAPHIC NEWS
Military crimes
In Geneva, the UN Office for Human Rights said there was growing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including indiscriminate shelling and executions. It says Ukraine also appears to have used weapons with indiscriminate effects.
Russia denies attacking civilians and says without evidence that signs of atrocities committed by its troops have been falsified. Ukraine has previously said it will punish all soldiers found to have committed war crimes. The government did not respond immediately to comments from the UN Office on Human Rights.
Russia said on Thursday that it had won the biggest battle in the war – the battle of Mariupol, the main port of Donbass, after a nearly two-month siege.
President Vladimir Putin has said the army will not try to eradicate the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers still hiding in huge steel mines there, but will barricade them inside. On Friday, Russia’s defense ministry said they remained “probably blocked”.
Washington has rejected Russia’s statement.
Why the battle for the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol matters in Russia’s war against Ukraine
“We still believe that Mariupol is disputed, that it has not been conquered by the Russians and that there is still active Ukrainian resistance,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN.
In the Russian-held part of the city, guns fell largely silent and dizzy residents dared to take to the streets on Thursday amid charred apartment buildings and broken-down cars. Some were carrying suitcases.
Volunteers in white protective suits and masks walked around the ruins, collecting bodies from inside the apartments and loading them into a truck marked with the letter “Z”, a symbol of the Russian invasion.
Maxar, a commercial satellite company, said photos from space showed freshly excavated mass graves on the outskirts of the city.
Ukraine estimates that tens of thousands of civilians have died in the city during the bombing and siege of Russia, and says 100,000 civilians are still there and need a full evacuation.
The relatives of the people of Mariupol were afraid of the worst. Sofia Telehina said that her grandmother was constantly crying when they last talked on the phone and said that everything was bombed to pieces. “I haven’t been able to contact her since.”
“Destroying everything”
In Zaporozhye, where 79 Mariupol residents arrived in the first convoy of buses allowed by Russia to travel to other parts of Ukraine, Valentina Andrushenko held back her tears as she recalled the ordeal.
“They (the Russians) have been bombing us since day one. “They tear everything down,” she told the city.
Moscow claims to have taken 140,000 Mariupol residents to Russia. Kyiv says many have been forcibly deported as a war crime.
In a late-night address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was doing everything possible “to talk about at least some victories” after failing to take the capital, Kyiv.
About 80 people who fled the besieged city of Mariupol finally reached Zaporozhye on April 21 after more than 24 hours.
Associated Press
“They can only postpone the inevitable – the time when the invaders will have to leave our territory, including from Mariupol, a city that continues to resist Russia, no matter what the occupiers say,” Zelensky said.
Minekayev, the Russian general, said Russian-speakers were suppressed in Transnistria, a Russian-occupied part of Moldova on Ukraine’s southwestern border. Moldova and Western leaders say that is not true.
Moscow has given the same justification for annexing Crimea in 2014 and supporting separatists in Donbas. Ukraine says it fears that Moscow may try to stage fake independence votes in the southern regions, as it did in the eastern and Crimean regions.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the urgent introduction of peace in Ukraine, a spokesman said, adding that Guterres could also visit Kyiv.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared victory in Mariupol, although hundreds of defenders are still hiding in a sprawling steel plant. He also called off the assault on the plant, saying it would be better to besiege the fighters than risk the lives of his troops.
Reuters
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