Ukraine – Current situation: Heavy fighting near Kharkiv – Difficult situation in Izyum

DThe Kiev leadership is keeping up intervention of Belarus at the side of Russia in the war against Ukraine is currently unlikely. The probability that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will decide to take part in the war is “15 to 20 percent,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich, according to the Unian agency.

Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian army uses Belarus as a staging area against Ukraine, but Belarus has so far not taken an active part in the war, despite repeated pressures from Moscow. The Ukrainian General Staff assumes that many Belarusian soldiers and officers will resist a deployment.

According to their own account, Ukrainian units have to deal with new battles Kharkiv repelled an attack by Russian troops in the east of the country.

Ka-52 attack helicopters were also deployed by the Russian side on Tuesday evening, regional commander Oleg Sinegubow was quoted as saying by Ukrajinska Pravda. “Our troops are holding their positions.”

The situation in the besieged, about 100 kilometers away, is difficult Izyum. There is no longer any connection to the city. All efforts to create a humanitarian corridor have so far been rejected by the Russian side. The information could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, the Russian military has unspecified military installations around the city Rivne rocket fired in north-western Ukraine. Three rockets fell on Tuesday, regional military chief Vitali Kowalj told Unian agency.

“During the evening alert, the enemy fired three times at an object of military infrastructure,” it said. “A commission is on site, the losses are being determined.” Kowalj did not give any details.

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The day before, the Russian military had reported attacks in the region. According to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, more than 80 fighters from the Ukrainian side were killed in a rocket attack at the Nowa Ljubomyrka military training area in the Rivne region. The information could not be independently verified.

Representatives of the US government – the combat effectiveness of Russian troops has fallen

According to words of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov the Russian military operation in Ukraine is proceeding “strictly according to plan”. Everything corresponds to the previously set goals, Peskow said in English to the US broadcaster CNN. The government in Moscow describes the attack on Ukraine as a “special military operation”, not a war.

When asked what President Putin has achieved in Ukraine so far, Peskov said that the goals have “not yet” been achieved. Among other things, he named the decimation of the Ukrainian military as a goal. Kyiv must come to terms with the fact that the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, is now an “unchangeable part of Russia”. In addition, Ukraine must recognize that the separatist regions in the east are now “independent states”.

Meanwhile, the combat effectiveness of Russian troops has fallen below 90 percent of their potential at the start of the invasion, Ein says US Department of Defense officials. He does not name evidence. Russia last officially reported losses on March 2nd.

At that time, 498 soldiers were killed and 1,597 wounded. US government national security adviser Jake Sullivan estimates that the number of Russian soldiers killed is now in the thousands.

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US Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said Russian troops were running out of supplies. The military have communication problems and have to resort to mobile phones. According to the Ukrainian army leadership, the Russian troops only have three days’ worth of ammunition, food and fuel.

Zelenskyj threatens Russian pilots

the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russian forces of a group of refugees from the besieged port city Mariupol being “easily captured” on a previously agreed escape route.

In his evening video message on Tuesday, the head of state again referred to the suffering of what he said were still 100,000 people in the city who had to endure “without food, without water, without medicine, under constant fire”.

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Before the start of the war, the city still had 450,000 inhabitants. It is strategically important for both sides as it is the last major port under Ukrainian control on the Sea of ​​Azov and prevents a direct land connection between the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia and the pro-Russian separatist-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine.

In addition, Selenskyj turned to the pilots of Russian fighter planes. He threatened all pilots with personal responsibility for their missions against targets in Ukraine. “You will be held accountable, however,” he said. “Today or tomorrow, it doesn’t matter that much. The important thing is that it is inevitable.”

As a particular example, he cited the shooting down of a Russian fighter bomber over the heavily contested port city Mariupol. “And that’s what will happen to everyone who kills our people, peaceful people in our peaceful country.” The Russian pilots apparently didn’t realize what orders they were carrying out: “Killing civilians is a crime.”

According to the Ukrainian account, around 100 Russian fighter planes and bombers have been shot down since the war began almost four weeks ago. This information cannot be independently verified.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova told the AFP news agency on Tuesday: “What I see now in Mariupol is not about war, it is about genocide.” “War theaters have some rules, some principles. What we see in Mariupol, [hat] no rules at all.”

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also said that the situation in the Russian-occupied city of Cherson in the south was deteriorating rapidly. It accused Moscow of refusing an auxiliary corridor for the evacuation of civilians and the transport of food.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office at least 117 children in the war killed been. 548 schools were damaged, 72 of them completely destroyed.