The first to be evacuated from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol are due to arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporozhye on Monday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. On Sunday, about 100 civilians were evacuated from the plant, the latest redoubt for Ukrainian forces in the city. Zelenski said he hoped “all necessary conditions” would be met so the evacuation could continue on Monday.
House Nancy spokesman Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking US official to visit Ukraine since the outbreak of the war, where he met with President Zelensky. At a news conference afterwards, Pelosi said the United States would not be harassed. “If they make threats, you can’t back down,” she said. Pelosi was awarded the Order of Princess Olga by Zelenski.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied that Russia insisted on “surrendering” Zelensky as a condition for peace or that Russia would try to claim victory in Ukraine by May 9th. “The pace of the operation in Ukraine depends above all on the need to minimize all risks to the civilian population and Russian military personnel,” he told Italy’s Mediaset television.
Russia’s latest strikes, including on grain warehouses and housing estates, “prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of annihilation for the Russian army,” Zelensky said in an address Sunday evening, asking: “What could be the strategic Russia’s success in this war? “” The ruined lives of people and the burned or stolen property will not give Russia anything. “
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed to continue to support Ukraine with money, aid and weapons, saying the pacifist approach to the war is “outdated”. His remarks at a May Day rally in Dusseldorf were an indirect rebuke to a group of intellectuals, lawyers and artists who condemned Russia’s aggressive war in an open letter, but urged Scholz not to send heavy weapons to Ukraine. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz will travel to Kyiv on Monday.
Pope Francis described the war in Ukraine as a “sinister regression of humanity” that made him “suffer and cry” in a Sunday lunch address in St. Peter’s Square. “My thoughts immediately turn to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city of Maria, barbarically bombed and destroyed,” he said of the Russian-controlled southeastern port city named after the Virgin Mary.
The governor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv has urged people not to leave shelters on Sunday due to heavy shelling. Speaking to the Telegram, Oleh Sinehubov said: “In connection with the intense shelling, we urge residents of the northern and eastern regions of Kharkov, especially Saltivka, not to leave the shelter during the day without urgency.
Russia’s defense ministry confirmed an attack on an airport near Odessa on Saturday. It says his forces destroyed a runway and hangar at an airport that contains weapons supplied by the United States and the European Union.
A fire broke out on Sunday at a Russian Defense Ministry site in Belgorod, near the border with Ukraine, the region’s governor said, injuring one person. “On the borders of three municipalities – Borisov, Belgorod and the Yakovlevsky city district – a fire broke out in one of the facilities of the Ministry of Defense,” the governor of the Russian Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov told Telegram.
The European Union could phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year as part of the latest set of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s military machine being discussed in Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said for weeks that the EU is working on sanctions against Russian oil, but the key question is how and when this product will be discontinued.
Russia’s online trolling operation is becoming increasingly decentralized and gaining “incredible strength” on TikTok with disinformation aimed at dispelling suspicions about events in Ukraine, a US social media researcher has warned. Darren Linville, a professor at Clemson University in South Carolina who has been studying the troll farm of the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) since 2017, said he has managed to create more authentic publications.
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