Russia’s top diplomat warned Ukraine not to provoke World War III and said the threat of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated” as his country launched attacks on rail and fuel installations far from the front line of Moscow’s new eastern offensive.
Meanwhile, the British Ministry of Defense announced on Tuesday that Russian forces had taken over the Ukrainian city of Kremina in the Lukansk region after days of street fighting.
“The town of Kremina has fallen and heavy fighting is reported south of Izyum as Russian forces try to advance on the towns of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk from the north and east,” the British army said in a tweet. It does not say how he knows that the city, which is located 575 kilometers southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, has fallen. The Ukrainian government did not comment immediately.
The General Staff of Ukraine said Russian forces were shelling Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, as they struggled to take full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk districts, which make up Donbass in Ukraine’s industrial center, and establish a land corridor to Crimea.
In the area of Velika Alexandrovka, a village largely in Russian-controlled Kherson Oblast, Ukrainian forces destroyed an ammunition depot and “eliminated” more than 70 Russian soldiers, the General Staff said.
Inna, 53, is crying at her burned-out house in Ozera, northwest of Kyiv on Monday. (Alexei Furman / Getty Images)
Luhansk Oblast Governor Sergei Haidai told the Telegram news agency that the Russians had fired on civilians 17 times in the past 24 hours, with the cities of Popasna, Lisichansk and Girske suffering the most.
Four people were killed and nine others were injured in Russia’s shelling of the Donetsk region on Monday, its governor Pavlo Kirilenko told Telegram. He said a 9-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were among those killed.
American weapons make a difference
The United States rushed to Ukraine with more weapons, saying aid from Western allies made a difference in the two-month war.
“Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding, “said US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Monday after he and the US Secretary of Defense paid a bold visit to Kyiv to meet with President Vladimir Zelensky.
Clavidia, 91, is being carried on a makeshift stretcher as she boarded a train fleeing the Severodonetsk war at Pokrovsk station on Monday. (Leo Korea / Associated Press)
Blinken said Washington has approved $ 165 million in ammunition sales – non-US ammunition, mainly if not entirely for Soviet-era weapons – and will also provide more than $ 300 million in US funding to buy more supplies.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went further, saying the United States wants to see Ukraine remain a sovereign, democratic country, but also wants to “see Russia weakened to the point where it cannot do things like invading Ukraine.” “.
Austin’s remarks appear to represent a change in US strategic goals, as Washington said earlier that US military aid was aimed at helping Ukraine win and protect Ukraine’s NATO neighbors from Russian threats.
In an obvious response to Austin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia had a “feeling that the West wanted Ukraine to continue fighting and, as they thought, to wear out, to deplete the Russian army and the Russian military-industrial complex.” This is an illusion.”
WATCH Russia hit the Ukrainian railways:
Russia has bombed Ukrainian railways after US officials visited Zelensky by train
Russia’s strikes have hit critical railway infrastructure in central and western Ukraine, hours after senior US officials traveled to Lviv by train to meet with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and promised additional economic and military assistance. 2:17
Weapons supplied by Western countries “will be a legitimate target,” Lavrov said, adding that Russian forces were targeting arms depots in western Ukraine.
Lavrov accused Ukrainian leaders of provoking Russia by asking NATO to join the conflict. NATO forces are “adding fuel to the fire,” Lavrov said, according to a transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
Lavrov warns of nuclear risks
“Everyone is reciting spells that we can never allow World War III,” he said in an interview with Russian television.
Lavrov said he would not like to see the risks of a nuclear confrontation “artificially inflated now that the risks are quite significant”.
“The danger is serious,” he said. “It’s true. It shouldn’t be underestimated.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter that Lavrov’s comments underscored Ukraine’s need for Western aid: “Russia is losing all hope of scaring the world not to support Ukraine. This speaks of the “real” danger of World War II. It just means that Moscow is feeling defeated in Ukraine. “
Smoke rises above the Azovstal Ironworks plant in the southern port city of Mariupol. (Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters)
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, its obvious goal was to take Kyiv, the capital. But Western-backed Ukrainians have forced President Vladimir Putin’s troops to retreat.
Moscow now says its goal is to take over Donbass, a predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region in eastern Ukraine. On Monday, however, Russia concentrated its firepower elsewhere, with missiles and fighter jets striking far beyond the front lines to try to thwart Ukraine’s supply efforts.
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 also included a rocket attack near Lviv, a western city near the Polish border that was swollen by Ukrainians fleeing violence elsewhere.
Ukrainian authorities say at least five people have been killed in Russian strikes in the central Vinnytsia region.
Ukrainian Irina petting dogs while asking for money to support an abandoned dog center next to a poster reading in Ukrainian: “Heroes Don’t Die” in Kyiv on Monday. Irina is a volunteer who helps in a shelter where dozens of abandoned dogs are housed. (Francisco Seco / Associated Press)
Russia has also destroyed an oil refinery and fuel depots in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine, said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov. In total, Russian warplanes destroyed 56 Ukrainian targets, he said.
Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. general who was NATO’s commander-in-chief from 2013-2016, said the strikes on fuel depots were aimed at depleting key Ukrainian military resources. The strikes on railway targets were aimed both at disrupting supply lines and intimidating people trying to use the railways to escape fighting, he said.
Phillips P. 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.
WATCH Residents of Odessa embrace their identity:
Shaped by the war, the people of Odessa embrace their Ukrainian identity
The Russian invasion creates a stronger sense of Ukrainian identity among residents of the Black Sea port city of Odessa, where most people speak Russian. 6:26
In Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova near the Ukrainian border, several explosions believed to have been caused by rocket-propelled grenades hit the territory’s Ministry of State Security. There were no immediate liability or reports of injuries. Transnistria is a strip of land with about 470,000 people. About 1,500 Russian soldiers are based there.
The Moldovan Foreign Ministry said that “the purpose of today’s incident is to create pretexts to tighten the security situation in the Transnistrian region.” The United States has said Russia could launch “false flag” attacks on its own country to create a pretext for invading other nations.
Last week, Rustam Minekayev, a Russian military commander, said the Kremlin wanted full control of southern Ukraine to pave the way for Transnistria.
Approximately 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers, hiding in a steel plant in the strategic southern port city of Mariupol, are tying up Russian forces, apparently preventing them from joining the offensive elsewhere in Donbass. Over the weekend, Russian forces launched new air strikes on the Azovstal plant to try to displace detainees.
About 1,000 civilians are said to be sheltered at the steel plant.
Another mass grave has been identified near Mariupol
The city council and the mayor of Mariupol said a new mass grave had been discovered about 10km north of the city. Mayor Vadim Boychenko said authorities were trying to calculate the number of victims. This is at least the third new mass grave found in Russian-controlled areas near Mariupol in the last week.
Mariupol has been eradicated by bombing and fierce street fighting over the past two months. Russia’s takeover of the city will deprive Ukraine of a vital port and give Moscow a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
In an evening video address, Zelensky said Ukraine maintained its resistance to “make the stay of the occupiers in our country even more intolerable” while Russia drained its resources.
Britain has said it estimates 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. Defense Minister Ben Wallace said 25% of Russian troops sent to Ukraine “have become ineffective in combat”.
Ukrainian authorities say about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in mid-April.
Add Comment