Status: 04/30/2022 09:02 a.m
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of wanting to destroy the Donbass. He speaks of a “fight for life”. According to Moscow data, more than a million Ukrainians were brought to Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of wanting to destroy the Donbass and all the people living there. The constant brutal bombing, attacks on infrastructure and residential areas showed that Russia wants to completely evacuate the area, the president said in his nightly video message.
“Therefore, the defense of our country, the defense of our people, is literally a struggle for life,” Zelenskyy said. The cities and towns of Donbass can only survive if Ukraine stands firm. “If the Russian invaders can even partially realize their plans, then they will have enough artillery and aircraft to turn the entire Donbass to stones. Just like they did with Mariupol.” The port city is just a Russian concentration camp surrounded by ruins.
The President described the situation in Kharkiv in northern Ukraine as brutal. However, Ukrainian troops and secret service agents have had important tactical successes there, Zelensky said, without giving any details. In the capital Kyiv, according to him, rescue workers were still searching the rubble after the rocket hits on Thursday.
Lavrov: More than a million Ukrainians in Russia
According to estimates by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, more than a million people have been brought “to safety” from Ukraine to Russia since the beginning of the war. As Lavrov said in a statement, 120,000 of them came from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions alone.
The minister also told the Xinhua News Agency and the Russian Foreign Ministry website that NATO’s vocal support for Ukraine is standing in the way of a political agreement to end the conflict.
Furthermore, Russia is not threatening nuclear weapons, Western media exaggerated on this subject. “We are not ‘playing’ with a nuclear war,” Lavrov said. He had previously warned of the real danger of a Third World War. At the end of February, Russia had put deterrent weapons on alert, which was understood worldwide as a threat to the nuclear arsenal.
“Avoid civilian casualties”
The Russian foreign minister also said that Russia knows the routes through which the West intends to deliver arms to Ukraine. According to him, the delivered weapons should become the target of what the officials call a “special operation” “as soon as they reach the territory of Ukraine”.
Lavrov continued to claim that the Russian military was doing “everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties”. Ukraine, on the other hand, reports civilian casualties every day. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently put the number of civilians killed at 2,899, but the actual numbers are said to be considerably higher.
Russia is not at war with NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said in an interview.
Image: dpa
According to Lavrov, negotiations with Kyiv on the draft of a possible agreement to end the war are not going well.
According to Ukrajinska Pravda, Zelenskyy said there was a high risk that Kyiv would break off negotiations with Moscow. He again called for direct negotiations with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin.
conflicting parties as a source
Information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body in the current situation.
US military: Ukrainian resistance halts offensive
According to the US Department of Defense, the Russian offensive in Ukraine is progressing much more slowly than planned. The resistance of the Ukrainians contributes to this, according to the ministry. The US military assumes that Russia’s actions in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine are not sticking to their own schedule.
There is a delay of probably “at least several days”. Russian troops were not making steady progress trying to advance north from Mariupol to approach Ukrainian soldiers from the south.