Russia announces a ceasefire on the Azovstal steelworks, elsewhere the bombardments rain down

• In Mariupolthe situation is still critical. Russia launched an assault on Tuesday for the first time with tanks and infantry on the Azovstal steelworks, according to one of the soldiers present in the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the city. The Kremlin on Wednesday denied launching the attack. But promises a ceasefire Thursday, Friday and Saturday according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. “The armed forces will open a humanitarian corridor from 08:00 to 18:00 Moscow time (05:00 to 15:00 GMT) on May 5, 6 and 7 from the site of the Azovstal metallurgical plant to evacuate civilians. During this period, the Russian armed forces and the units of the Donetsk People’s Republic (unilaterally proclaimed by the pro-Russian separatists, editor’s note) will unilaterally cease fire and hostilities.the ministry continued in a statement.
• In the Mariupol region, 344 people were evacuated according to the Ukrainian press, confirmed by Volodymir Zelenksy. They are mainly women and children. They were taken to an area ” safe “ in Zaporizhia. Ukraine’s president on Wednesday called on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to help ” save “ the wounded lying on the site of the Azovstal steelworks, besieged and bombarded by Russian troops. “The lives of the people who remain there are in danger (…) We ask for your help to save them”, said Mr. Zelensky, quoted by his press service, during a telephone interview with Mr. Guterres. According to kyiv, hundreds of soldiers and civilians, including dozens of children, are still in underground galleries at this site.
• Missiles are falling all over the country. Russian forces continued their offensive in the east on Wednesday, while hitting numerous targets in the west, from Lviv to the hitherto unspoiled mountainous region of Transcarpathia, not far from the Hungarian border. “In order to destroy Ukraine’s transport infrastructure, the enemy fired missiles at facilities in Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovograd, Lviv, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Transcarpathia, Odessa and Donetsk regions”said the General Staff of the Ukrainian army in the morning.
• In the eastern partthe Russians seek to “to secure full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and to maintain a land corridor to occupied Crimea”, he added. A Russian strike left two dead and eleven injured, all civilians, in the village of Chandrygolove, lamented the governor of the Donetsk region Pavlo Kyrylenko. Others left one dead and one injured, a child, around Kharkiv
• In Kaliningrad, simulations of nuclear-capable Russian missiles. This Wednesday, May 4, Moscow claimed that its army had simulated the firing of nuclear-capable missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, while Russian forces continue their offensives in Ukraine. Russia simulated “electronic launches” of nuclear-capable Iskander mobile ballistic missile systems, the Department of Defense said in a statement. After shooting “electronic”the soldiers carried out a maneuver to change position in order to avoid “a possible retaliatory strike”according to the Department of Defense.
• The EU presented the sixth package of sanctions against Russia, which provides for a total embargo on Russian oil, which will be implemented gradually over the next six months; the exclusion of other Russian banks from the Swift network, including Sberbank; the inclusion on the list of sanctioned Russian personalities of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, many Russian soldiers, but also the wife, daughter and son of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. These proposals will have to be approved by the Twenty-Seven to be applied.

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