2023-04-27 17:01:50
The war in Ukraine He turns 427 days old this Wednesday. Fighting continues on the front Bakhmut, as the epicenter of the toughest clashes in Donbas between Russian and Ukrainian troops, where Russia is advancing towards greater control of the area.
Ukraine looks back 37 years to remember the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, considered the worst in history, and warn of the risk that persists today by the military offensive launched by Russia in February 2022. For the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, the Russian forces use the tactic of “blackmail”. Fear of a new disaster skyrocketed in 2022after the Russian forces took some of the Major power plants in Ukraine, such as the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant – the largest in Europe.
Russia informed that its Armed Forces have carried out training exercises for the Belarusian military in the use of tactical nuclear missiles barely a month after Moscow announced an agreement with Minsk for the disengagement of this type of weapon.
On the other hand, the President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has spoken with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion fourteen months now.
On February 24, 2022, the President of Russia Vladimir Putinordered the Russian offensive in the country in what he called a “special military operation”.
Since then, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 20.6 million people have fled Ukraine, since the beginning of the Russian military offensive, which he considers to be the fastest exodus in Europe since World War II. That is, up to 50.3% of the population –estimated at almost 41 million in 2021– would have left Ukrainian territory.
According to him last report of Institute Study of War (ISW) (1) stresses that Russian forces continue “with the ground attacks in and around Bakhmut, along the front line of the city of Avdiivka-Donetsk“.
On the other hand, the ISW also claims that the Russian forces would have carried out “limited ground attacks on the axis of the Svatove-Kremmina front“.
Also, the think tank American asserts that “Russian milbloggers continue to vehemently deny that Ukrainian forces established sustained positions on the eastern (left) bank of Kherson Oblast“.
Ukraine looks back 37 years on Wednesday to remember the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, considered the worst in history, and warn of the risk that persists today due to the military offensive launched by Russia in February 2022. For the Ukrainian president , Volodimir Zelensky, the Russian forces use the tactic of “blackmail”.
“37 years ago, the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant left a huge scar all over the world,” the president recalled on his Twitter account, alluding to an explosion that spread a radioactive cloud in 1986 over much of the extinct Soviet Union and which involved the exposure of more than eight million people.
The Soviet Government did not recognize until the following year the need for international aid due to an accident whose consequences actually persist today and are still visible in the exclusion zone. No one has returned to Pripyat, the nearest town, and the ‘zero ground’ of the plant remains covered by a sarcophagus.
According to the official death toll, recognized by the international community, only 31 people died as an immediate result of the explosion, while the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster. In 2005, however, he anticipated that as many as 4,000 could have died as a result of radiation exposure.
Zelenski has also participated this Wednesday in an offering at the monument ‘To the heroes of Chernobyl’, in an act in which he has warned of the effects that the disaster had on a once “developed” area. “Today, the 30-kilometre exclusion zone around Chernobyl is still a dangerous place, with a high concentration of radiation,” he said.
Fears of a new disaster soared in 2022, after Russian forces seized some of Ukraine’s main power plants after launching the invasion. In the first weeks they came to control the Chernobyl plant -specifically from February 24 to March 31-, although today the enclave that worries the most is in the eastern part of the country, the main combat front .
The Russians have controlled the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant since the beginning of March, which with six reactors is considered the largest in Europe. Over the past year, it has suffered frequent power outages and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned that relying so often on emergency generators is playing with fire.
“We must do everything possible to prevent the terrorist state from using nuclear facilities to blackmail Ukraine and the world,” Zelensky stressed on Wednesday. The Ukrainian president demands the withdrawal of Russia from all the occupied zones, although from Moscow they do not contemplate any concession.
The IAEA, the theoretical global guarantor of security issues related to nuclear issues, maintains a permanent mission at the Zaporizhia plant, but has not been able to get the parties to the conflict to agree on a security zone around these facilities to avoid any potential accident.
The agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, warned last week that he is “deeply concerned” about the situation around the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, in the vicinity of which agency staff continue to detect frequent explosions that, on occasion, show “intense bombardments”.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has reported this Wednesday that the Armed Forces have carried out training exercises for the Belarusian military in the use of tactical nuclear missiles just one month after Moscow announced an agreement with Minsk for the disengagement of this type of weapon. .
According to the Russian Defense portfolio, the Belarusian military has “studied in detail the details of the content problems and the use of special tactical ammunition of the Iskander”, alluding to a type of missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads and already deployed on the territory of Belarus.
These training exercises, which have taken place since the beginning of April in the training camps of the Russian Southern Military District, have concluded with satisfactory results for Moscow’s interests, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced at the end of March the deployment of short-range tactical nuclear weapons in the territory of Belarus, a neighboring country and main partner on the European continent.
The Russian president reported that the facilities for the storage of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus will be completed by the beginning of July, and defended that the supply of this type of weapon does not violate non-proliferation agreements because the United States already sent this type years ago. of ammunition to other countries.
The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, spoke this Wednesday with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion fourteen months ago now.
“I have had a long and significant phone call with the President of China, Xi Jinping,” Zelensky wrote on his Twitter account.
Zelensky has indicated that he trusts that this call and the appointment of the Ukrainian ambassador in Beijing, the former Minister of Strategic Industries Pavlo Riabikin, will serve to give “a powerful impetus” to the development of bilateral relations between Beijing and Kiev.
For his part, Xi has informed Zelenski that China will send a special government representative on Eurasian affairs to visit Ukraine and other countries in the region to engage in talks “with all parties” and try to reach a “political solution” to the crisis. according to official media.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine fourteen months ago, China’s position has been questioned by Kiev’s Western partners, who accuse it of alleged collusion with the Kremlin, especially after the peace plan proposed by Beijing that they consider close to the Russian theses.
Despite their misgivings, the West — which has cast doubt on whether China will sell arms to Russia — agrees that Beijing has an important role to play in this war, hoping it can persuade Russia to continue the invasion and make him sit down to negotiate.
He United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 20.6 million people have fled Ukraine, since the beginning of the Russian military offensive, which he considers to be the fastest exodus in Europe since World War II. Up to 50.3% of the population –estimated at almost 41 million in 2021– would have left Ukrainian territory.
According to the latest UNHCR data (2), 20,636,096 people have left the Ukrainian territory as of April 18, 2023. By countries, 10.885.691 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived Poland (April 16th), 2.852.395 a Russia (October 3, 2022), 2.524.705 a Hungary, 2.240.464 a Romania (April 16th), 1.313.413 a Slovakia (April 16th), 802.705 a Moldavia (April 16) and 16.705 a belarus (April 11).
The High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 8.1 million Ukrainian refugees have already been registered on European territory, and that up to 5 million they would be in a situation of Temporary Protection, due to the Russian invasion of his country.
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