RAccording to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, ussland wants to support military activities Kyiv and Chernihiv reduce “radically”. Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said in Istanbul on Tuesday that this decision was made in view of the course of negotiations with Kyiv.
Fomin justifies the announcement as a step to strengthen mutual trust. The necessary conditions for further negotiations with the aim of reaching an agreement must be created, Fomin told journalists.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also confirmed on Tuesday that the invasion forces would be concentrated on the Donbass region. Overall, the main tasks “of the first phase of the operation have been completed,” he said in Moscow. Therefore, it is possible to focus on the “liberation of the Donbass”, in which the so-called People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk are located.
Shoigu basically repeated the strategic goals of the Russian invading forces that were revised last Friday. This is also possible because “the combat potential of the Ukrainian armed forces has been significantly reduced”. Shoigu assured that no recruits who will be called up for military service in April will be sent to the front.
The administration building in Mykolaiv was hit by a Russian missile
Source: REUTERS
In the southern Ukrainian city Mykolayiv According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at least seven people were killed and 22 others injured by a Russian missile attack.
The rubble is still being combed through in search of more victims, Selenskyj said in a video message in front of the Danish parliament on Tuesday. Mykolayiv has been under Russian fire for weeks, but the attacks on the city have recently eased.
Success for Ukrainian army in Zelenskyy’s hometown and in Irpin
According to its own statements, the Ukrainian army was pushing Russian troops near the southern Ukrainian city Kryvyi Rih back. “The occupiers are no closer than 40 kilometers from the city,” said the head of the city’s military administration, Olexander Wilkul, in a video message published on Facebook on Tuesday. Some Russian units have withdrawn across the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region to neighboring Cherson. The information could not initially be independently verified.
Source: Infographic WORLD
Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of President Zelenskyy. About 600,000 people lived there before the war. In the meantime, the Russians had come up to about ten kilometers from the industrial city, according to the Ukrainian side.
The city too irpin near Kyiv was freed according to government information. “The city has now been liberated, but it is still dangerous to be there,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said on television on Monday evening. The armed troops and the police had advanced to the suburbs of the capital Kyiv and “immediately the streets were swept completely empty”.
A Ukrainian policewoman is overcome with emotion after comforting people evacuated from the Kiev suburb of Irpin
Source: dpa/Vadim Ghirda
The city’s mayor, Oleksandr Markushin, previously said on his Telegram messenger channel that the Russian soldiers had been expelled from the city. The main checkpoint on the Kyiv-Irpin road was open again on Monday. He was blocked from the media two weeks ago after the death of a US journalist.
According to US estimates, Ukrainian troops also conquered the site Trostianets back south of Sumy. That’s what a representative of the US Department of Defense told reporters.
According to their own statements, the Ukrainian armed forces are also trying to ward off attacks by Russian units in several places. One is there, the Russian advance on the big city Sloviansk in the Donetsk region in the south-east of the country and in the small town about an hour’s drive away Barwinkowe to stop in the Kharkiv region, according to the situation report of the Ukrainian General Staff, which was published on Facebook on Tuesday night.
in the Luhansk region in the east of the country attempts are being made to contain Russian attacks around the cities of Rubishne with 60,000, Lysychansk with 100,000 and Popasna with 20,000 inhabitants. Ukraine reported regular fighting from the vicinity of all three cities. This is to prevent Russian troops from passing Ukrainian forces. In the Chernihiv region in the north of the country, efforts are being made to stem the Russian advance.
The Russian units are weakened, disoriented and a large part of the troops are cut off from logistics and the main armed forces, it said. That is why Moscow is trying to compensate for the declining combat effectiveness with artillery fire and rocket attacks.
Mariupol apparently just before the fall
The southern Ukrainian port city Mariupol on the other hand, is apparently on the verge of falling. in one Interview on Ukrainian television the city’s mayor, Vadim Boichenko, said on Monday that everything was no longer in his power. “Unfortunately, we are now in the hands of the occupying forces.”
However, it was not clear to what extent this related to control of the urban area. It is possible that he was primarily aiming at the situation in the escape corridors. These are virtually completely controlled by the Russian invaders, he said. In any case, the situation appears to be extremely difficult.
In the city itself, life has become unbearable, there is no electricity, no water, no heating, according to the mayor. According to him, only 160,000 of the original 450,000 inhabitants are still in the metropolis on the Azov Sea. About 140,000 were able to flee before the blockade, about 140,000 afterwards, of whom 30,000 were kidnapped to Russia, according to Ukrainian sources.
A soldier from Russian units in front of a destroyed building in Mariupol
Source: REUTERS
According to Ukrainian information, 90 percent of the city’s residential buildings were damaged as a result of Russian attacks, as were seven hospitals, three of which were completely destroyed. 57 schools and 70 kindergartens were hit, of which 23 and 28 were completely destroyed.
In view of this hopeless situation, Bojchenko called for the complete evacuation of the city. That is currently the only hope. 26 buses are ready for this in front of the city, but the Russian occupiers will not let them through.
Kadyrov wants to “completely liberate” Mariupol
Meanwhile, Chechen dictator and henchman of Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, has traveled to the besieged city, according to Russian media reports. “Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is in Mariupol to boost the fighting spirit of our fighters,” Chechen Minister Akhmed Dudayev told Russia’s state news agency Ria Novosti. This published a photo of Kadyrov with around 20 Chechen fighters.
According to the minister, Kadyrov will help adjust the strategy for the “liberation” of Mariupol, as it is called in Russian propaganda language. Kadyrov himself wrote on Telegram that the “cleansing” of the bombed-out port city of “Nazi bandits” was in “full swing”. He promised that Mariupol “will be completely liberated in a very short time.”
More than 100 dead counted in Kyiv
According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, these attacks have killed more than 100 people in Kyiv alone since the start of the Russian invasion. Among them are four children, he says in a speech to the council of the Italian twin city of Florence. In the meantime, 82 multi-storey buildings have been destroyed in the capital.
Despite some military successes, Ukrainian President Zelenskyj continues to assess the situation in his country as tense. He said that in his video speech every evening on Tuesday night.
Source: Infographic WELT/Beate Nowak
Russian troops controlled the north of Kiev region and had resources and forces, Zelenskyy said. They tried to rebuild shattered units. The situation also remains “very difficult” in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donbass and southern Ukraine regions.
Selenskyj again called for tougher sanctions against Russia. Regarding an embargo on Russian oil supplies being discussed in Europe, he said that there are now many indications that such tightening of sanctions against Russia will only take place if Moscow uses chemical weapons. “There are no words for that,” Zelenskyj said.
“Think how far it’s come. Waiting for chemical weapons,” he said, asking whether everything that Russia has done so far deserves such an embargo. He did not give any details as to where these clues came from.
A group of Ukrainian and international experts will be set up this week in the Presidential Office in Kyiv to continuously analyze the sanctions against Russia and their effects.