Two days after the missile strike that claimed the lives of 52 people, including 5 children, on Friday at Kramatorsk station, the evacuation of civilians continues in fear of an imminent offensive. Update on the situation on the 46th day of the fighting.
Ukraine, “ready for the big battles”
“Ukraine is ready for the big battles. Ukraine must win them, including in the Donbass”, the eastern region of the country, said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaïlo Podoliak, quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine press agency.
“And when that happens, Ukraine will have a stronger position in the negotiations, which will allow it to dictate certain conditions,” he added.
Earlier in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky had underlined during a press conference with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who visited kyiv: “We are ready to fight, and at the same time to seek diplomatic ways to stop this war.
After withdrawing its troops from the kyiv region and northern Ukraine, Russia has made its priority the total conquest of Donbass, part of which has been controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists.
Evacuations continue…
Two days after the massacre at Kramatorsk station (east), where 52 civilians, including five children, who were preparing to flee were killed in a strike attributed to a Russian missile, the evacuation of the population continued. Moscow has denied being responsible for the strike, going so far as to denounce a Ukrainian “provocation”.
On Sunday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 4,532 civilians had been evacuated the day before.
The majority left the Zaporizhia region, she added, adding that nearly 200 people were able to leave the besieged port city of Mariupol (south) and more than a thousand fled Melitopol, Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Kreminna and Popasna in the Luhansk region.
“The Russian enemy continues to prepare to intensify its offensive operations in eastern Ukraine and take full control of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions”, in Donbass, the general staff of the Ukrainian army on Saturday in a daily point on Facebook.
…. and bombardments
On Sunday morning, bombings and airstrikes killed at least two people in Kharkiv (east), the country’s second largest city, and its suburbs, regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov announced. On Saturday, 10 civilians were killed and at least 11 injured in strikes around and southeast of Kharkiv. “The Russian army continues to wage war on civilians, for lack of victories on the front,” accused the governor of Kharkiv.
In Dnipro, a large industrial city of one million inhabitants, a rain of missiles destroyed the local airport, already hit on March 15, local authorities announced. The number of victims is still unknown.
During the night, it was in the Mykolaiv region, about a hundred kilometers northeast of Odessa, the country’s third largest city and a major strategic port on the Black Sea, that seven missiles fell, according to the command local military.
Over 1,200 bodies counted in Kyiv region
1,222 bodies have been discovered so far in the Kyiv region, partly occupied for several weeks by Russian forces, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova announced on the British channel Sky News on Sunday. She also reported 5,600 investigations opened for alleged war crimes since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24. The governor did not specify whether the bodies discovered were exclusively those of civilians.
She hinted that there were probably many other corpses that had not yet been picked up and appraised. In the town of Boucha alone, northwest of kyiv, which has become a symbol of the atrocities of the war in Ukraine, nearly 300 people were buried in mass graves, according to a report announced by the Ukrainian authorities on April 2.
First meeting between Putin and a European leader
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will travel to Moscow on Monday to meet Vladimir Putin, a first for a European leader since the start of the Russian invasion. “He is going there having informed Berlin, Brussels and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky” to encourage dialogue, said a spokesperson for the Chancellor, who was in Ukraine on Saturday.
On Monday, the Ukraine conflict will be on the menu for discussions in a virtual exchange between US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country has so far refused to join votes condemning Moscow at the United Nations.