The British Foreign Office said on Sunday that Russia was using a troll factory to spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine on social media and to target politicians in a number of countries, including Britain and South Africa. “We cannot allow the Kremlin and its shady troll farms to invade our online spaces with their lies about Putin’s illegal war,” said Foreign Minister Liz Truss.
Twenty wounded civilians managed to evacuate from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and are probably on their way to Zaporozhye. Satellite images show that almost all of the plant’s buildings have been destroyed.
Ukraine has exchanged prisoners with Russia, with seven soldiers and seven civilians returning home. One of the soldiers is a woman who is five months pregnant, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said online. She did not say how many Russians were transferred. On Thursday, Ukraine said Russia had handed over 33 troops.
Hollywood actor and UN humanitarian envoy Angelina Jolie paid a surprise visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday, the regional governor told Telegram. Jolie, UNHCR’s special envoy for refugees since 2011, came to talk to displaced people who have taken refuge in Lviv, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in a rocket attack on Kramatorsk railway station in early April. “She was very excited [the children’s] history “, writes Maxim Kozitsky.
The UK’s foreign ministry is investigating reports that a British citizen has been detained by Russia after a video surfaced showing the interrogation of a man in camouflage. In the unverified video, which is allegedly shown on Russian television, the man appears to be giving his name to Andrew Hill. He spoke in an English accent, had a hand in a sling, a bandage around his head, and a bloodied hand.
In a speech Saturday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine would be free. “All … temporarily occupied cities and communities in which the occupiers are now pretending to be masters will be liberated … The occupiers are still on our land and still do not recognize the apparent failure of their so-called operation. We still have to fight and focus all our efforts to drive out the occupiers. “
The mayor of Mariupol said the Russian military had killed twice as many city residents in two months of war as Nazi Germany in two years of occupation during World War II. Vadim Boychenko said the Nazis killed 10,000 civilians; the Russians have doubled that number, Boychenko said, and deported more than 40,000 people.
Ukrainian police have found the bodies of three civilian men in the Bucha district, north of Kyiv, tied up and in some cases with their mouths shut, the regional police chief said. He said the bodies were found with several gunshot wounds and traces of torture.
Russian troops have been forced to merge and redeploy parts of their “failed offensives” in northeastern Ukraine, the UK Defense Ministry said, as both Kyiv and Moscow are dealing with heavy losses in the Donbass region. “Russia hopes to correct the problems that previously limited its invasion through a geographical concentration of combat power, shortening supply lines and simplifying command and control.
The Ukrainian military estimates that 23,200 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion, while Ukrainian prosecutors say they have registered more than 8,000 war crimes by Russian troops and are investigating 10 Russian soldiers for alleged atrocities in Bucha near Kyiv.
Russia has said the risks of nuclear war must be kept to a minimum, according to its TASS news agency. Vladimir Ermakov, head of the foreign ministry’s nuclear non-proliferation department, said: “The risk of a nuclear war, which should never be unleashed, must be minimized, in particular by preventing any armed conflict between nuclear forces. Russia clearly follows this understanding. “
Russia and the West are closer to a nuclear war than during the Cuban Missile Crisis, said Nikita Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter. Nina Khrushchev, an academic whose great-grandfather was the leader of the Soviet Union during the 1962 crisis, warned that the war in Ukraine seemed more dangerous, as neither side seemed to want to “give up”. She said both US President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev had agreed to de-escalate as soon as nuclear war became a real threat.
Russian forces have stolen “several hundred thousand tons” of grain in the regions of Ukraine, which occupy, according to the Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Ukraine. Speaking to Ukrainian national television, Taras Vysotsky expressed concern that most of what he said was 1.5 million tonnes of grain stored in the occupied territories that could also be stolen by Russian forces.
A Russian missile strike on Odessa airport damaged the runway, rendering it unusable, but no casualties have been reported.
Russia has bombed Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, as part of a renewed push in the east of the country, while claiming that a “draft possible agreement” between the two countries is being discussed on a daily basis.
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