As Russia shifts its focus to eastern Ukraine in an attempt to control the Donbass region, more and more Western countries have vowed to send artillery to support Ukraine’s defense.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly called on international leaders to send more military aid, saying his country needs billions in aid each month to make up for the economic losses since the Russian invasion and hundreds of billions to rebuild its infrastructure.
French President Emmanuel Macron has promised anti-tank missiles and howitzers. He told the French newspaper Ouest France this week that France would continue to support Ukraine as much as it could without entering into direct conflict.
Canada has promised weapons to help Ukraine and recently delivered four M-777 howitzers, CBC News reported on Friday after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier this week that he would send “heavy artillery”.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden announced additional military aid to Ukraine on Thursday totaling about $ 800 million, corresponding to the same amount set last week. Zelenski said this was “exactly what we were waiting for”.
A NEW PHASE OF WAR: What does a new phase of the war mean for Ukrainians in the east
USA IN TELEGRAM TODAY: Join our new Russia-Ukraine military channel
Latest developments:
►The Pentagon says US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will convene a meeting in Germany next week with defense officials and military leaders from more than 20 countries to discuss Ukraine’s immediate and long-term defense needs.
►The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that one serviceman had died, another 27 had disappeared and 396 had been rescued after a fire at the famous Russian warship Moscow last week.
►The UN Office of Human Rights says its investigators have documented at least 50 civilian deaths, including through judicial execution, in the Kiev suburb of Bucha.
►Putin declared victory in Mariupol, but this is far from the truth. The war in Ukraine is entering a “critical window” to pave the way for the next phase of the war, President Joe Biden said.
Modern political disinformation has its roots in the age-old Russian myth
The Russian Empress Catherine the Great ruled a vast empire and over the years conquered many new lands.
She appointed her boyfriend Gregory to watch one of these conquests – a place now called Ukraine. Over time, he informed her that citizens are prosperous and happy. But according to the version of the tale transmitted for centuries, this is a lie.
In the legend, Catherine planned to visit and observe the thriving, joyful subjects. Fearing that his deception would be exposed and eager to please his beloved, Gregory instructed servants to build fake villages along the coast – freshly painted facades.
To this day, people around the world still refer to fake news and fake fronts, using his name: “Potemkin villages.”
But history and politics are a tangle of lies and intrigue, especially in Russia, so there is a twist to this tale: There were no fake villages. Researchers claim that Gregory’s achievements in Ukraine are authentic, and popular claims to the contrary are fiction – slander, thrown out by Russian rivals at the time and forever baked in the faith and vernacular.
“The very concept of the Potemkin Village is the Potemkin Village,” said Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Catherine the Great and Potemkin: Strong Love and the Russian Empire.
Although the legend may be false, historians believe that the Crimean expedition and Potemkin’s fable remain at the heart of today’s conflict in Ukraine. Simply put, they claim that thousands have been killed and millions displaced in a war based on Putin’s misconceptions about this story.
“Dennis Wagner.”
Putin declared victory in Mariupol, but the battle “without evidence” ended
After turning the eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol to ruins, President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called the military campaign there a success, something he desperately needs as the war turns into a third month.
That’s all but.
Russia has failed to defeat hundreds of Ukrainian fighters from the giant steel plant in the strategic city. Ukraine and President Joe Biden have rejected Putin’s claim of victory.
“There is still no evidence that Mariupol has completely fallen,” Biden said after announcing a new round of military aid to Ukraine, raising total US aid to about $ 3.4 billion since Putin invaded Ukraine.
“We are currently in a critical period of time when they will prepare the stage for the next phase of this war,” Biden said.
It is clear that the people of Mariupol have suffered some of the worst atrocities committed by the Russians, even when Russia lost about a quarter of its fighting force in Ukraine – troops, planes, tanks, ships and other equipment – since the start of the war. February 24.
“Maureen Gropp, Tom Vandon Brooke.”
PERSPECTIVE OF THE WAR: Putin claims victory in Mariupol. What does this mean in the war in Ukraine, which Russia is losing?
More than 240 cultural heritage sites, from churches to theaters, have been damaged by Russian forces, Ukraine’s culture ministry said on Saturday.
About 242 attacks on Ukrainian cultural sites have been registered in 11 regions of the country, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy. Kharkiv region took the brunt of the damage with 84 registered attacks, followed by Donetsk and Kyiv.
More than 90 religious buildings were destroyed or damaged, including churches, mosques and synagogues. Other damaged or destroyed sites include 29 memorials to historical figures and events, 19 museums and 33 historical cultural buildings, such as theaters and museums.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture has described the attacks as “war crimes”, citing the 1954 Hague Convention, which establishes a global commitment to the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflict.
“We are documenting each episode and forming a detailed basis for the Russian army’s atrocities against cultural heritage,” Alexander Tkachenko, Ukraine’s minister of culture and information policy, said in a statement. “All materials will be used as evidence in criminal cases against war criminals.
“The aggressor will not be able to break the Ukrainian spirit,” Tkachenko said.
“Come on, Lee.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that one serviceman had died, 27 were missing and 396 had been rescued after a fire on Moscow’s flagship missile cruiser last week.
The statement comes a week after the ship sank. The Pentagon could not confirm the source of the ship’s damage, but Odessa Governor Maxim Marchenko told the Telegram that Ukrainian forces had hit the cruiser with guided missiles with two missiles, USA TODAY reported earlier.
Shortly after the incident, the ministry announced that the entire crew of the ship, which according to media reports is about 500 people, had been rescued. The ministry did not provide an explanation for the controversial reports.
The sinking of the legendary Russian warship Moscow, whose history dates back to the Cold War, was a blow to Moscow’s military efforts in Ukraine and a symbolic defeat for Russia.
– Ella Lee, Associated Press
A second mass grave has been found outside the besieged port city of Mariupol, his city council said on Friday. The council shared a satellite image from Planet Labs with the Telegram of what it described as a mass grave in the village of Vinogradne, east of Mariupol.
The grave is at least 45 meters by 25 meters or about 147 feet by 82 feet and can hold the bodies of at least 1,000 Mariupol residents, city officials said.
“We will see more and more such graves,” Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko said in a statement. “This is the biggest genocide in Europe since the Holocaust.
Earlier this week, satellite images from Maxar Technologies revealed what appeared to be rows of more than 200 freshly excavated mass graves in the town of Manchush, west of Mariupol. The mayor and city council said the place could accommodate up to 9,000 civilians. The discovery of mass graves has led to accusations that the Russians are trying to cover up the massacre of civilians in the city.
– Ella Lee, Janine Santichi and the Associated Press
MOTION BURIAL DISCOVERED: Russians accused of burying 9,000 civilians in a mass grave near Mariupol: summary on April 21
At least three civilians were killed and seven others were injured in shelling in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Friday as Russian forces continued to move in the country’s industrial east, the region’s governor told Telegram.
Governor Pavlo Kirilenko blamed the deaths of “three more peaceful residents” in a small town and two villages for Russian shelling.
Also Friday, the local prosecutor’s office in the northeastern region of Kharkiv announced that charred bodies of two residents were found near the town of Izyum the same day. The post accuses Russian soldiers of torturing residents and burning their bodies.
Humanitarian corridors are considered dangerous
A senior Ukrainian official said the humanitarian corridors would not be opened on Friday because they were unsafe. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk asked people expecting to be evacuated from military zones to be “patient” and “stay there”.
Vereshchuk said Russian forces had offered to open a corridor for military capitulation, but not for about 1,000 civilians sheltered in the steel plant, Ukraine’s last stronghold in the besieged southern city of Mariupol.
The corridors were closed to Ukrainians who had hoped to evacuate in a few days in the past week. Humanitarian corridors, agreed ceasefire zones to allow the safe passage of civilians, are lifelines for many people who are still in areas of heavy fighting. However, Ukrainian authorities have accused Russian forces of ignoring agreed corridors and continuing dangerous shelling along routes.
Contribution: Associated Press
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