Days pass and the war still does not end in Ukraine. More than two months after the invasion of the country by the Russian army, the fighting continues and the date of a possible end, which many observers feared to see arrive on May 9 in an unleashing of violence, could finally be more distant.
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Victory Day not targeted
In an interview on Italian television broadcast on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov assured that Moscow does not want to end the war at any cost on May 9, celebrated as Victory Day in reference to the surrender. d Nazi Germany in 1945 against the Allies, including the Soviet Union.
“Our military will not artificially adjust their actions on any date”, he assured, specifying that the pace of the “operation” carried out in Ukraine depended on “the need to minimize the possible risks for the civilian population. and the Russian military. In just over two months, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed and millions have been displaced.
The continuation of evacuations hoped for in Mariupol
In the city – 90% destroyed – of Mariupol, the local authorities hope that the evacuations of civilians will be able to continue, this Monday morning. On Telegram, Pavlo Kirilenko, regional governor of Donetsk, announced that departures were scheduled from 7 a.m. The operation began on Saturday with the inhabitants sheltered in the undergrounds of the Azovstal steelworks, in coordination between Ukraine, Russia and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“Today, for the first time since the start of the war, this vital humanitarian corridor has started to function. For the first time, there have been two days of real ceasefire on this territory ”of the steel complex, rejoiced, Sunday evening, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a message broadcast by video. According to him, more than a hundred civilians, mainly women and children, were evacuated.
In Zaporizhia, the Russians assure that everything is fine
The International Atomic Energy Agency considers the situation at the Zaporijia power plant to be “worrying”, but the Russian forces want to be reassuring and for this reason they have organized a press trip to the site. The journalists were able to note that an administrative building was charred, that many windows had exploded, but that no trace of shooting or bombardment was visible on the cubes surmounted by a red dome containing the reactors.
” Here, everything is fine ! “, even trumpeted the new pro-Moscow mayor of Energodar (where the power station is located, very close to Zaporizhia), Andrei Shevtchik, who arrived at this post in the wake of the Russians. However, a great vagueness surrounds the operation of the plant, which continues to be provided by the Ukrainian teams.
Civilians killed in the East
Eight civilians were killed on Sunday in bombings in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, including four in the town of Lyman alone, near the front and under the direct threat of the Russian advance, regional authorities announced. On Telegram the governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, also added that seven civilians had been injured in this city from where the Ukrainian army recently had to withdraw.
A senior Ukrainian military official underlined “the difficult situation” in the east of the country, particularly in the regions of Izium and Sieverodonetsk, “where the enemy has concentrated most of its efforts and its most prepared troops for fight”.