Would it finally be possible to get people out of the besieged Mariupol, where about 100,000 people are still holding out and hardly have anything to eat or drink? That was the question on Friday in Ukraine, until the evening the answer was not there. “Today an operation is planned to get the civilians out of the plant,” said the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the morning. He himself, as always spreading confidence in all the horror, said he believed that this would be possible with the help of the United Nations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres brought a vague promise to Kyiv from his talks with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Tuesday that the Russian side would allow Mariupol to evacuate and free around 1,000 civilians who were seeking shelter from bombs and missiles at the Azov steel plant . The UN would try everything to help, Guterres had said.
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On Thursday he was in Kyiv, visited a destroyed suburb and met Zelensky. Soon after, Russia fired rockets at the capital while the UN chief, who was traveling as a peace ambassador, was still there. Later, as he did every night, Zelensky made a video call and sent precisely dosed messages to addressees from Washington to Moscow, with praise, thanks and condemnation.
“It was very important that the Secretary General visited Borodyanka in the Kyiv region and saw with his own eyes what the Russian occupiers were doing there. There is no doubt that the Russian army in Ukraine laid the foundations of the world order established after the Second World War trampled underfoot,” Zelensky said. “But we also need the Russian side, who approach the matter without cynicism and actually implement what they say.” That could be translated into: Russians lie, despise people, but in Mariupol they have the chance to do something positive in the catastrophe they have caused.
Biden wants to provide another $33 billion for Ukraine
Naturally, Zelensky sent thanks across the Atlantic. US President Joe Biden ensured that Ukraine once again receives powerful aid from the United States, Biden wants to request another 33 billion dollars for Kyiv. To this end, the US Congress passed a new version of the WWII “Lend-Lease” law, which authorizes the President until 2023 to lend or lease military equipment to Ukraine and other states affected by Russia’s war of aggression. “We have to do this,” Biden said in the White House. Zelensky also thanked on Twitter: “We defend common values - democracy and freedom. We appreciate the help of the USA,” he wrote. As agreed, this matched Biden’s tweet: “We need this law to support Ukraine in its fight for freedom.”
Zelensky left it to his adviser Oleksiy Arestovych to report that the Russian offensive in the east had inflicted heavy casualties on the Ukrainian forces in the past few days. He also formulated it in such a way that confidence should remain – yes, heavy own losses, but those of the Russian army are greater: “Your losses are colossal.” British military intelligence confirmed that “Russian territorial gains have been limited” at “significant costs for the Russian armed forces”.
The Ukrainian military leadership reported relative calm on the fronts on Friday after the fierce fighting of the past few days. Russian authorities reported that a checkpoint in the Kursk region near the border was shelled from Ukraine, and according to the Russian agency Interfax, Russia fired from a submarine in the Black Sea for the first time caliberguided missiles off.
The German government also sharply condemned the shelling of Kyiv, in which a woman was killed and several people injured: “The actions of the Russian side are inhuman.” It also reveals to the “world community again that Putin and his regime have no respect for international law,” said a government spokesman in Berlin. The Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov spoke of an attack on the “security of the world”. Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko put it this way: Moscow gave Guterres the finger.
British aid organization Presidium Network said Russian military captured two of its British volunteers in Ukraine on Monday at a checkpoint south of the major city of Zaporizhia. The two men were out to distribute food and medicine and to help with evacuations. The UK Foreign Office is doing everything it can to support and investigate the two individuals,” UK Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan told Sky News.