LIVE – Ukraine: Russia announces the “partial” evacuation of occupied localities in the south of the country

Russia announced on Friday the “partial” evacuation of occupied localities near the front line in the south.

Wagner’s boss Evgeny Prigojine accuses the Russian general staff of being responsible for “tens of thousands of killed and injured” on the Russian side in Ukraine, in a message directly aimed at the Russian Minister of Defense.

“They will bear the responsibility for tens of thousands of killed and injured in front of their mothers and children,” Yevgeni Prigojine slashed in a new video, hours after threatening to withdraw his men on May 10 from Bakhmout.

The group of pro-Russian hackers NoName claims this Friday the blocking of the French Senate website, still inaccessible in the middle of the day.

“Access to the Senate website has been disrupted since this morning, our team is fully mobilized to remedy the malfunctions”, tweeted the Senate around 11:30 a.m., without further comment.

This group of hackers had already attacked the site of the National Assembly in March.

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The Council of Europe warned this Friday against “the decline of democracy” on the continent already hard hit by the war in Ukraine. She called on her member states to “reverse” this trend at the Reykjavik summit in mid-May.

Marija Pejcinovic Buric, the organisation’s secretary general, deplored the “profound impact of the brutal and unlawful aggression that Russia continues to carry out against Ukraine”, in her annual report.

This attack “has caused immense suffering”, she continued, referring to “the hundreds of thousands of dead, the millions of refugees, the terrifying tales of torture, rape and loss. We yearn for a return to peace: a lasting peace based on justice”.

A new fire broke out on Friday in southwestern Russia, near Ukraine, at an oil refinery, local emergency services said, quoted by Russian news agencies.

The fire that affected an area of ​​60 m² was reported in the morning at the oil refinery in Ilsky, Krasnodar region, after a drone attack occurred on Thursday.

It was brought under control early this morning “before the arrival of the fire brigade”, indicated the local branch of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations. “No one was hurt”.

The boss of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner threatens to withdraw his fighters from the city of Bakhmout, epicenter of the fighting in eastern Ukraine, from May 10, because of a lack of ammunition which he attributes to the army against a background of rivalry.

“We were going to take the city of Bakhmout before May 9. When they saw this, the military bureaucrats stopped the (ammunition) deliveries (…) Therefore, from May 10, 2023, we will withdraw from Bakhmout,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video posted by his press service.

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During a speech organized this Friday, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, again reacted to the supposed drone attack which hit the Kremlin on Wednesday.

According to him, Russia promises “concrete actions” in response to this episode.

Moreover, he once again pointed to the role of the United States. The alleged attack is impossible without Washington knowing about it, he said.

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Several explosions were heard Thursday in Kiev, the day after a night of drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital, AFP journalists reported, who saw a drone that the anti-aircraft defense was trying to shoot down, while the Kyiv military administration reported that “air defense is in action”.

The explosions stopped after about fifteen to twenty minutes. Journalists then saw a cloud of black smoke billowing as the Kyiv City Military Administration announced that the airstrike warning was over.

Russian forces in Ukraine are so weakened that they cannot launch a “significant offensive” and are therefore concentrating on consolidating their gains in occupied territory, US intelligence director Avril Haines said on Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir “Putin has likely scaled back his immediate ambitions as he seeks to consolidate control of occupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraine, and to ensure that Ukraine never becomes an ally of NATO,” the official said during a hearing before a parliamentary committee.

Hundreds of thousands of children have likely been transferred by Russia to areas under its control in Ukraine as well as to its own territory, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

“There seems to be a plan to assimilate them in a massive way,” Veronika Bilkova, a professor at the Faculty of Law in Prague, who wrote the study with two other experts, told reporters on Thursday.

It is difficult to determine exactly how many children have been deported, a policy that began as early as 2015, following the annexation of Crimea, she pointed out.

Ukrainian authorities announced on Thursday the detention of Gennadiï Troukhanov, the mayor of Odessa, a major port city in the south of the country, accused of embezzling public funds in a major case dating from 2016.

The Supreme Court specializing in corruption cases has ordered the arrest of Gennadiy Trukhanov, 58, for 60 days, the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office said on Telegram.

Welcome to this live dedicated to monitoring news related to the war in Ukraine this Friday, May 5, 2023.