Ukrainian rescue teams collect a body in the Donetsk town of Yakovlivka. /
The distress call to Moscow to evacuate the population confirms the fall of the Russian front in one of the four provinces that Putin decided to annex
Ukraine is advancing firmly on the southern front and just 24 hours after announcing the liberation of five new towns in Kherson province, the Russian-imposed local governor, Vladimir Saldo, asked Moscow for help in evacuating civilians and “putting them at risk.” safe from enemy missiles. Saldo launched the message via Telegram and pointed out that the population’s departure “is necessary in view of the possible revenge of the Ukrainian forces.” He proposed evacuation to Crimea, Rostov, Krasnodar Krai or Stavropol Krai. The Kremlin responded by offering free accommodation for civilians. This distress message confirms the collapse of Russian troops in one of the four provinces that Vladimir Putin decided to annex, along with Zaporizhia (south), Donetsk and Lugansk (east).
British intelligence confirmed that the fighting will soon reach the city of Kherson, where some 300,000 people lived before the war, the only capital that the Russians have managed to control since the beginning of the invasion. At the moment there is hardly any information on the situation in the liberated areas, but there is great fear that what happened in Bucha, Irpin or Kharkiv will be repeated. In his appearance before the Council of Europe, the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, affirmed that, after the recent recovery of land in the east of the country, his forces found mass graves with hundreds of corpses.
Amid the escalation of tension on the fronts, Moscow and kyiv announced a new prisoner exchange. “Another prisoner exchange, another moment of joy,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak said on Telegram. Each side released twenty detainees, which means that although weapons speak, direct channels of communication are also kept open.
energy, weapon of war
One more day Russia punished power plants throughout Ukraine and the supply situation is serious in large areas of the country. In the province of kyiv, the authorities again denounced the use of kamikaze drones, but did not provide details of the damage suffered.
The control of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is also part of the strategy of using energy as a weapon of war, since it was one of the main means of electricity production for the Ukrainians. Since March it has been in Russian hands, since September it no longer produces electricity and Russia announced that it will begin to use its own nuclear fuel once the reserves it has are exhausted. Renat Karchaa, adviser to the general director of the Russian company Rosenergoatom, indicated that “the process of changing to the Russian system has already been launched.” The great fear of the kyiv authorities is that Putin decides to start diverting the energy produced by the largest plant in Europe to Crimea.
Two days after meeting with Putin in Moscow, the director of the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, traveled to kyiv to meet with Zelensky. The IAEA has four inspectors inside the plant and their priority is to create a safety zone to avoid a disaster. Grossi assured that they are “advancing in the establishment of the security zone” and also referred to the efforts underway to achieve the release of the number two of the plant, Valeriy Martynyuk, arrested on Monday by Russian troops.
The nuclear threat in Ukraine is doubled by the risk of a disaster at this plant and by the possibility of the use of atomic weapons. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, referred to this last possibility and warned Russia that its forces will be “annihilated” if it chooses to use this type of weaponry.
arrival of help
The Ukrainians are coping day by day with what is put in front of them and since the rain of missiles on Monday they have asked their allies to hurry up with the shipment of anti-aircraft batteries. The response from the West has been swift and after the announcement by Germany and the United States, the United Kingdom announced that it will deliver AMRAAM rockets “for use with the NASAMS air defense systems promised by the United States,” according to the Ministry of Defense in London. It is a medium-range air-to-air missile that gives kyiv the ability to shoot down cruise missiles.
French President Emmanuel Macron also guaranteed that France would supply Ukraine with air defense systems, including radars and missiles, in the coming weeks. However, Zelensky denounced this Thursday that “Ukraine only has 10% of the air defense it needs.” “We are fighting a big state that has a lot of equipment and missiles,” he said during his speech to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.