War in Ukraine: Moscow continues its offensive and intensifies its strikes on the Donbass

Europe 1 with AFP 06:46, April 28, 2022

THE ESSENTIAL

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is visiting the suburbs of kyiv on Thursday, in Boutcha, Irpin and Borodianka, theaters of abuses attributed to the Russian army by the Ukrainians, while Moscow continues its offensive in the east and southern Ukraine.

kyiv accuses the Russian forces of having committed massacres after the discovery of dozens of corpses wearing civilian clothes in these localities occupied and then abandoned by the Russian army.

On April 2, in Boutcha, AFP journalists discovered the horror: a street strewn with corpses.

And the UN documented the "murder, including some by summary execution", of 50 civilians, after a mission in the city.

On Wednesday, Canadian MPs passed a motion condemning Russia's "acts of genocide against the Ukrainian people" and saying there is "clear and abundant evidence of systematic and massive war crimes and crimes against humanity." ".

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The UN chief arrived in Ukraine from Moscow where he pleaded with Vladimir Putin for a ceasefire "as soon as possible".

He also said he was "concerned by the repeated reports of possible war crimes", judging that they "require an independent investigation".

The main information:

- For two weeks, Moscow has continued its offensive and intensified its strikes in eastern and southern Ukraine 

- UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is expected this Thursday in Boutcha and Irpin, victims of massacres attributed to the Russian army. 

- The European Union on Wednesday accused Russia of "blackmail" after it cut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria as Westerners continue efforts to arm Ukrainians against Russia.

"Russian blackmail"

For its part, the European Union on Wednesday accused Russia of "blackmail" after it had stopped the supply of gas to Poland and Bulgaria while Westerners continue their efforts to arm the Ukrainians against Russia.

Britain on Wednesday called on Ukraine's allies to show "courage" in increasing their military aid, arguing that the war in Ukraine was "our war" and victory in kyiv a "strategic imperative for all of us". .

"Heavy weapons, tanks, planes - dig into our stocks, ramp up production, we have to do all that," British Foreign Minister Liz Truss said in a speech in London on Wednesday evening.

The Russian president for his part again warned against any outside intervention in the conflict in Ukraine, promising a "rapid and lightning" response.

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Moscow is trying in the meantime to target this military aid and the Russian Ministry of Defense affirmed on Wednesday that "sheds with a large quantity of foreign weapons and ammunition, delivered to the Ukrainian forces by the United States and European countries , had been destroyed with Kalibr missiles fired from the sea at the Zaporozhye aluminum plant in southern Ukraine.

The governor of this region, however, brought a firm denial: "No ammunition and arms depot was hit in Zaporozhye", he retorted, hammering that the affected factory "has not been operational since six years".

Russian troops are also bombing bridges and railways to slow down Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister said on Tuesday after the destruction of a strategic bridge linking this country to Romania.

Continuation of the Russian offensive 

Russian forces, which have been stepping up their offensive in Donbass for two weeks, announced on Wednesday that they had carried out airstrikes on 59 Ukrainian targets.

At the same time, the Ukrainian army has, rare on its part, recognized Russian advances in the east, in the Kharkiv region and in the Donbass, a mining basin partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.

kyiv admitted that the Russians had taken localities stretching from north to south, suggesting that Moscow wants to take a vice in a large pocket still in the hands of the Ukrainians.

"We have extremely difficult weeks ahead," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in a statement on Wednesday.

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According to him, the Russian army, "already aware of its strategic defeat, will try to inflict as much suffering as possible" on the Ukrainian soldiers whom he urged to "hold on".

In Kherson (south) - the first major city seized by Russian forces after their invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24 - "the occupants launched tear gas canisters against Ukrainian demonstrators who chanted 'Kherson is Ukraine' !” the Ukrainian military said in a statement.

Demonstrators "were injured and arrested", added the same source without providing further details.

"Save the Mariupol Garrison" 

In Kharkiv, whose northern and eastern districts are less than 5 km from the front line, at least three people died and 15 were injured in shelling, Governor Oleg Synegoubov said.

At the southern tip of Donbass, in the strategic port city of Mariupol, besieged and devastated, "the enemy massively bombards and blocks our units near the Azovstal factory", affirmed for its part the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. in his daily report.

Commander of the 36th Mariupol Marine Brigade, Sergey Volyna, appealed for help again, saying he had 600 wounded soldiers and hundreds of civilians with him.

"My message today is: save the garrison of Mariupol, carry out an exfiltration operation for us. People will just die here (...) civilians die with us (...) the city is almost erased from the surface of the Earth”, he implored in a message relayed on Telegram.

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Gazprom stops delivering gas to Poland and Bulgaria

According to Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich, "the efforts of the Russian invaders are concentrated around Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Mariupol" where they are trying to dislodge the Ukrainian soldiers barricaded in the Azovstal metallurgical complex and where there are also hundreds of civilians.

Efforts are being made, he said, to "force Vladimir Putin to release them".

"Civilians first, but we are also working to evacuate our soldiers," he said.

The EU "united and united" in the face of the Russian gas weapon 

On the economic ground, the Russian group Gazprom announced on Wednesday that it had suspended all its gas deliveries to Bulgaria and Poland, ensuring that these two countries had not paid in rubles, as Vladimir Putin has demanded since March.

The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen denounced "gas blackmail" and affirmed that these two member countries of the EU and NATO, very dependent on Russian gas, were now supplied "by their neighbors in the 'European Union".

The European ministers in charge of energy will meet on Monday May 2 in an "extraordinary session", announced Wednesday evening the French minister in charge of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili.

These events come at a time when many chancelleries are worried about the risk of spreading the conflict, after a series of explosions, attributed by kyiv to Moscow, in the pro-Russian separatist region of Transdniestria, in Moldova.

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"We strongly condemn such actions. The Moldovan authorities will take care to prevent the republic from being drawn into a conflict," said Moldovan President Maïa Sandu on Tuesday, urging the population to calm down.

On Wednesday, authorities in the separatist territory said a border village hosting a major Russian army ammunition depot had come under fire from Ukraine.

To help Ukraine, the European Commission proposed on Wednesday to suspend all customs duties on products imported from this country into the EU for one year.

The proposal still needs to be approved by the European Parliament and the 27 member states.

President Volodymir Zelensky welcomed the proposal adding that Russia is "trying to cause a global price crisis" and "chaos" in the world food market.

The Ukrainian president also said on Twitter on Wednesday that he had spoken with his Indonesian counterpart who invited him to the G20 summit in Bali in November.