More than 50 days of fighting and Ukraine is still struggling under Russian strikes. After an invasion in almost the whole country, Russian troops are concentrating on eastern Ukraine and the capital kyiv.
Eyes are also riveted on Mariupol, the country’s strategic port, which Russia claims to control almost completely. Taking the martyr city would allow the Russians to consolidate their territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by linking the Donbass region to Crimea. Update on the latest events.
An “inhuman” situation in Mariupol
The city of Mariupol is about to fall. On Sunday evening, the Ukrainian general staff reported Russian rocket attacks. Tu-22M3 supersonic bombers were also reportedly used. Assaults were attempted in the vicinity of the port and the steelworks of Azovstal, according to Spiegel.
The situation in this strategic port is “inhuman”, declared the Ukrainian president on Saturday evening, calling on Westerners to “immediately” provide the heavy weapons he has been demanding for several weeks. For its part, Russia claims to control almost all of the city and launches a new appeal to its last defenders to lay down their arms. She had set an ultimatum at noon on this Palm Sunday in Ukraine.
It expired without the last defenders of Mariupol surrendering their weapons. “The city did not fall. Our military forces, our soldiers are still there. They will fight until the end,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal told ABC. Among these soldiers is the “Azov battalion”, a time constituted a paramilitary militia of neo-Nazi obedience, before being integrated into the official army.
For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, there are only “two options”: “Either the partners provide Ukraine with all the necessary heavy weapons, planes and, without exaggeration, immediately” to “reduce the pressure on Mariupol and raise the siege” of this city.
“Either – the path of negotiation, in which the role of the partners should also be decisive”, continued the Head of State, affirming that the search for a “military or diplomatic” solution was a “daily” activity since the beginning of the blockade but proved “extremely difficult”.
No humanitarian corridor this Sunday
As the bombardments continue, the Ukrainian authorities announced the suspension this Sunday of the humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians from the east of the country. A decision which intervenes for lack of agreement with the Russian army on a stop of the shootings.
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“This morning, we failed to negotiate a ceasefire on evacuation routes with the occupiers. That is why, unfortunately, we are not going to open humanitarian corridors today,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.
The suburbs of kyiv again bombarded
A Russian strike targeted the suburbs of kyiv for the third time since Friday. This Sunday, the city of Brovary, located about twenty kilometers east of the capital, was the scene of bombardments. The mayor of the city, Ihor Sapozhko, said the attack targeted a “facility” and the local “power plant”. No casualties from the attack have yet been reported.
For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed responsibility for the bombing of a military factory in the suburbs of the capital. “Overnight, high-precision missiles launched by aircraft destroyed an ammunition factory near Brovary in the Kyiv region,” the ministry said on its Telegram channel.
Five dead after new strikes on Kharkiv
At least five people were killed and 20 injured on Sunday in a series of strikes on Kharkiv, a major city in northeastern Ukraine, which caused fires, the emergency services announced. AFP journalists heard two bursts of gunfire and saw five fires spreading through residential areas in the center of the city.
Saturday, strikes had already started a fire in several buildings in the city center and destroyed a kitchen which provided free meals to the inhabitants of this city. Regional Governor Oleg Sinegoubov announced that he had identified three dead and 31 injured, including four children.
In the east, the Russian Defense Ministry assured Sunday that “high-precision missiles had destroyed fuel and ammunition warehouses” in Barvinkove (Izium region) and Dobropillia (not far from Donetsk). constant bombardment of the (Lugansk) region continues,” said its Ukrainian governor, Sergiï Gaïdaï. The town of “Zolote was hit hard today. They deliberately targeted a five-storey building… Two people were killed and five injured,” he said.
The pope evokes the “martyrized” Ukraine
In this “Easter of war”, Pope Francis called on Sunday “those who have the responsibility of the Nations” to “hear the cry of peace of the people”, evoking the “martyred” Ukraine. “We have seen too much blood, too much violence (…) Let’s stop showing the muscles while people are suffering”, launched the sovereign pontiff during his traditional blessing “Urbi et Orbi”, in front of some 50,000 worshipers in St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
The Vatican tweeted in Russian. “ No word will be powerless before God (Luke 1:37). Nothing is impossible for God, even to end a war with no end in sight, a war that is causing monstrous massacres and atrocities against defenseless civilians before our eyes every day. »