Russia on Monday launched a series of attacks on railway and fuel installations deep in Ukraine, far from the front line of Moscow’s new eastern offensive, in a bid to thwart Ukraine’s efforts to organize supplies for the battle.
The United States, meanwhile, has turned to more weapons at Ukraine, saying aid from Western allies makes a difference in the two-month war.
“Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said a day after he and the US Secretary of Defense made a bold visit to Kyiv to meet with President Vladimir Zelensky.
Blinken said Washington has approved $ 165 million in US ammunition sales – non-US ammunition mainly, if not entirely, for Soviet-era Ukrainian weapons – and will also provide more than $ 300 million in US funding to buy more supplies. .
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin continued his comments, saying that while the US wants to see Ukraine remain a sovereign, democratic country, they also want to “see Russia weakened to the point where it cannot do things like invading Ukraine. “.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the United States and its allies of trying to “split Russian society and destroy Russia from within.”
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky sees US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, right, in this image from a video posted on Facebook by Zelensky’s office on Monday. The three met in Kyiv on Sunday night. (Press Office of the President of Ukraine / Associated Press)
Another mass grave
Authorities in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol say a new mass grave has been identified. Mayor Vadim Boychenko said authorities were trying to estimate the number of victims in the grave, about 10km north of Mariupol.
Satellite images published over the past few days have yielded what looked like images of other mass graves.
Mariupol has been eradicated by bombing and fierce street fighting over the past two months. In addition to liberating Russian troops, the capture of the city will deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Moscow to build a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Britain has said it believes 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since Moscow launched its invasion. Defense Minister Ben Wallace said 25 per cent of Russian combat units sent to Ukraine had “become ineffective in combat” and Russia had lost more than 2,000 armored vehicles and more than 60 helicopters and fighter jets.
A man sits in a yard near a damaged building in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Monday. (Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters)
Ukrainian authorities say about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in mid-April.
Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic research at St Andrews University in Scotland, said the war was turning into a campaign of growing losses and gains on the battlefield.
“The two sides seem to be weakening each other every day,” he said. “So the question is, what can you import that is new, but what can you destroy on the other side?”
Investigation of war crimes
Other events have reported fires at two oil rigs in western Russia, not far from the Ukrainian border. Their cause was not immediately known.
And the European Union’s Criminal Justice Agency (Eurojust) said on Monday that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would participate in a joint team investigating war crimes allegations in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan and the chief prosecutors of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine have signed an agreement on the first-ever participation of the International Criminal Tribunal in the investigation team, according to a press release issued by Eurojust.
“With this agreement, the parties send a clear message that every effort will be made to effectively gather evidence of major international crimes committed in Ukraine and bring those responsible to justice,” Eurojust said.
The men are carrying the coffin of a man who died during the Russian occupation before being buried in a cemetery in Bucha, Ukraine, last Tuesday. Weeks after Russian forces withdrew from the city, the task of retrieving dozens of bodies continues. (Eugene Maloletka / Associated Press)
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, its apparent goal was a lightning offensive to seize the capital and perhaps even overthrow the government. But Western-backed Ukrainians are sinking Putin’s troops and thwarting pressure on Kyiv.
Moscow now says its focus is on the eastern region of Donbass, although a senior military official has said he wants to control southern Ukraine. Although both sides said the campaign in the east had begun, it had not made much of a breakthrough.
Russia is focusing on Ukrainian resources
On Monday, Russia focused its firepower elsewhere, with missiles and fighter jets striking far behind the front lines.
Five stations in central and western Ukraine have been hit and one worker killed, said Alexander Kamishin, head of Ukraine’s state railway. The bombing involved a rocket attack near Lviv, a western city near the Polish border that was swollen by Ukrainians fleeing fighting elsewhere in the country.
Thick black smoke rises from the site of a Russian missile strike on Krasne railway station in the Zolochev region of western Ukraine on Monday morning. (Jean-François Benoit / CBC)
Ukrainian authorities say at least five people have been killed in Russian strikes in the central Vinnytsia region.
Russia has also destroyed an oil refinery in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine, along with fuel depots there, said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov. In all, Russian warplanes destroyed 56 Ukrainian targets overnight, he said.
Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. general who served as NATO’s commander-in-chief from 2013 to 2016, said the latest strikes on fuel depots are part of a strategy to drain key Ukrainian military resources. Strikes on rail targets, on the other hand, are a newer tactic, he said.
“I think they’re doing it for a legitimate reason to try to block the flow of supplies to the front,” Breedlove said. “The illegal reason is that they know that people are trying to leave the country, and this is just another intimidating, terrorist tactic that will make them lack faith and confidence in traveling on rails.
Volunteers evacuate an elderly woman from her apartment as Russian bombing continues in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (Felipe Dana / Associated Press)
Civilians are still hiding in the steel plant
Earlier Monday, Russia’s defense ministry announced plans for a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to exit the besieged steel plant in Mariupol safely.
Ukrainian authorities say up to 1,000 civilians are being held at the Azovstal plant.
But Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told the Telegram news agency that Ukraine had not agreed to the evacuation plan and therefore did not consider the route safe.
Vereshchuk also said that Russia had violated agreements on such humanitarian corridors before. Ukraine is asking the UN to intervene to monitor the evacuation.
A satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows damage to the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on Sunday. (Planet Labs PBC / Associated Press)
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due to visit Russia and Ukraine this week. Vereshchuk called on Guterres to be the “initiator and guarantor” of a humanitarian route from Azovstal and for UN and International Committee of the Red Cross staff to accompany all evacuees.
The huge steel plant, which has a scattered maze of underground canals, is the last remaining stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in the strategic port city of the Sea of Azov.
Ukrainian troops persisted for weeks in the scattered plant, despite strikes by Russian forces and repeated demands for their surrender.
WATCH Women ask for help from a video from the steel plant:
Women asking for help in the video group says it is from the Mariupol bunker
The far-right Ukrainian Azov Battalion has released a video allegedly from the bunker of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, in which Russian-speaking women are begging to be released from the siege of Russia. ‘Help us!’ one is crying. The Azov Battalion is a far-right armed group that was included in the National Guard of Ukraine after the first Russian invasion in 2014. 1:22
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