L’Ukraine announced on Sunday that more than 1,200 bodies had been discovered so far in the kyiv region, the site of atrocities committed during the Russian occupation last month, as bombardments continued on the country which prepares for an onslaught. massive offensive in the east, fled by its inhabitants.
In the immediate future, airstrikes and bombings continued on Ukraine: Sunday, they killed at least two people in Kharkiv (east), the second largest city in the country, and in its suburbs, announced regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov .
On Saturday, 10 civilians were killed and at least 11 injured in strikes around and southeast of Kharkiv, the governor announced on Sunday evening.
“The Russian army continues to wage war on civilians, for lack of victories on the front,” accused the governor of Kharkiv.
On Monday, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will be the first European leader to travel to Moscow since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 to meet President Putin there.
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.
Massacres and cruelties
On Sunday, Pope Francis called from St. Peter’s Square for an “Easter truce” to “achieve peace” in Ukraine and put an end to “a war that every day brings before our eyes heinous massacres and cruelties atrocities committed against defenseless civilians”.
As in response, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill, one of the pillars of Vladimir Putin’s regime, called for “uniting” around the Kremlin to fight the “external and internal enemies” of Russia.
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.
While the population tries to flee the east of the country to escape the battle which is announced there, it is in the region of kyiv, occupied for several weeks by Russian units, and places of atrocities committed against the population civilian, that the search for the bodies continues.
“To date, we have 1,222 people killed in the Kyiv region alone,” Attorney General Iryna Venediktova told Britain’s Sky News channel.
She did not specify whether the bodies discovered were exclusively those of civilians, but also mentioned 5,600 investigations opened for alleged war crimes since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24.
Ms Venediktova reported a week ago that 410 dead civilians were found after Russian forces withdrew from positions they held in the Kyiv region, from where they had been unable to take the capital in the face of fierce resistance from the Ukrainians.
The prosecutor then suggested 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.
“Butcha was not done overnight. For many years, Russian political elites and propaganda have incited hatred, dehumanized Ukrainians, fueled Russian superiority and prepared the ground for these atrocities,” he wrote. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Twitter.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday accused Ukrainians and Westerners of “monstrous and ruthless” provocations and murders of civilians in Luhansk in the Donbass region (east) partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
In Bouzova, also near kyiv, two bodies dressed in civilian clothes were discovered in a manhole, AFP noted. A woman looked inside before collapsing, having recognized the body by the shoes: “My son, my son,” she cried.
Ready for the “big battle”
Further east, the Ukrainians were preparing to fight a “big battle” for control of the Donbass region, now a priority target for Moscow, and from where the evacuation of civilians continues in fear of an offensive. imminent.
“Ukraine is ready for the big battles”, assured the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaïlo Podoliak on Saturday evening, when kyiv had just received the visit of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and the promise of new deliveries of weapons, in particular armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles.
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.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Westerners to “follow the example of the United Kingdom” and impose “a total embargo on Russian hydrocarbons”.
But on Sunday, on the American channel CBS, he added: “I don’t trust that we will receive everything we need”.
EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, are due to consider a sixth sanctions package against Moscow, which will not, however, affect oil and gas purchases.
The head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell announced his intention to launch the discussion on an oil embargo on Monday, “but a formal proposal is not on the table”, admitted Friday a senior European official.
The talks come as the World Bank releases its latest catastrophic forecast for Ukraine: the war-torn economy will shrink by 45.1% this year due to the conflict.
The whole region will also be impacted. Eastern Europe alone is expected to suffer a 30.7% recession, according to the institution.
For his part, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the Alliance was preparing plans for a permanent military force on its borders to prevent any further Russian aggression.
This new force will, he added, be a “long-term consequence” of the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Evacuations
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Sunday that 4,532 civilians had been evacuated the day before from areas threatened by fighting.
The majority left the region of Zaporizhia (south), she added, adding that nearly 200 people had been able to leave the besieged port city of Mariupol (south) and that more than a thousand had fled from towns in the Lugansk region in the east.
In Kramatorsk, where a missile strike on Friday in front of the station left 57 dead, including at least 5 children among the hundreds of people waiting to take a train to the west, evacuations of civilians continued on Saturday by road.
More than 4.5 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the beginning of the Russian invasion, according to the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Awaiting a major Russian offensive, Ukrainian soldiers and members of the Territorial Defense were busy fortifying their positions and digging new trenches in the rural area of Barvinkove in the east of the country. The roadsides were mined, and anti-tank obstacles installed at all crossroads.
Vladimir Putin, whose decision to invade Ukraine was shattered by fierce Ukrainian resistance, has scaled back his plans but wants to secure a victory in Donbass ahead of the May 9 military parade in Red Square marking the Soviet victory over the Nazis, analysts say.
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11/04/2022 00:36:40 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2022 AFP