(Kramatorsk) US President Joe Biden for the first time accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of carrying out a “genocide” in Ukraine on Tuesday, the day when regional authorities in the south-east of the country estimated at least 20,000 dead on Tuesday. number of victims in Mariupol since the end of February.
Updated yesterday at 7:51 p.m.
What you need to know
- The conflict has made more than 4.6 million refugees;
- Kyiv refuses a visit from the German president;
- President Zelensky on Tuesday denounced “hundreds of cases of rape” recorded in areas previously occupied by the Russian army;
- The Russian offensive continues “calmly”, according to Vladimir Putin;
- “Putin has decided that he will not stop”, according to Macron;
- Joe Biden accuses Vladimir Putin of carrying out “genocide”
- A battle of tunnels and dungeons in Mariupol;
- At least 20,000 people have died in Mariupol since the end of February;
- A Russian offensive in the east is imminent;
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Monday evening in a video address for more weapons from his allies;
- UK attempts to verify whether chemical weapons were used by Russian forces in Mariupol;
- Several UN officials on Monday called for the opening of investigations into violence against women;
- Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he was “rather pessimistic” after his meeting with Vladimir Putin.
The word was previously used by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky but never by the US administration: “Yes, I called it genocide,” Joe Biden told reporters during a trip to Iowa, a few hours after having evoked this term during a speech devoted to the fight against inflation.
“It is increasingly clear that Putin is simply trying to erase the very idea of being able to be a Ukrainian”, developed the American president. If “the lawyers, at the international level”, will decide on the qualification of genocide, “for me, it looks like it”, he assured.
Claiming that the “evidence was mounting” regarding the “horrific things the Russians did in Ukraine”, the Democrat predicted that the world would “find out even more about the devastation”.
Mr Zelensky praised on Twitter the “true words of a true leader”, because “calling things by their name is essential to opposing evil”, while calling for “urgently more heavy weapons”.
Regarding Mariupol, “we can say that between 20 and 22,000 people died” in this city, Pavlo Kirilenko, the Ukrainian governor of the Donetsk region, said on Tuesday during an interview with the American television channel CNN.
The governor previously reported 10,000 killed in the besieged city, cut off from the world and bombarded for more than 40 days. He admitted that it was in fact “difficult to talk about a number of victims”, the city being the subject of a blockade.
Governor Kirilenko also indicated on Telegram that Mariupol is now plagued “day and night” by “street fighting”. However, he admitted to having “almost no contact” with the city.
According to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaïlo Podoliak, on Twitter, “Ukrainian soldiers are surrounded and blocked” in the city where “90% of the houses” have been destroyed.
Taking Mariupol would allow the Russians to consolidate their territorial gains on the coastal strip along the Sea of Azov by connecting the Donbass region to the Crimean peninsula, which they annexed in 2014.
The Russian army claimed to have thwarted Monday an attempt to break through by a hundred Ukrainian soldiers with armored vehicles which were in a factory in the north of the city.
“Chemical Agents”
The existence of this vast metallurgical complex transformed into a stronghold by the Ukrainian forces of Mariupol, with kilometers of underground, promises a fierce battle for the total control of Mariupol, even the use of chemical weapons, envisaged by the pro-Russian separatists of Donbass .
The United States thus reported on Tuesday “credible information” in this sense.
According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “Russian forces could use different riot control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents” against “Ukrainian fighters and civilians” in Mariupol.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) also said on Tuesday that it was “concerned” by this information, on which the United Kingdom had already warned on Monday.
“New mass graves”
In the immediate future, the civilian losses are revealed over the days in other areas of the country, even before the great battle promised in the east for control of Donbass.
The Ukrainian governor of the Luhansk region revealed on Tuesday that around 400 civilians had been buried since the start of the war on February 24 in the city of Severodonetsk alone.
Morgues in towns in the region are “overflowing with the bodies of dead civilians”, Serguiï Gaïdaï added on Telegram.
On Tuesday, President Zelensky denounced “hundreds of cases of rape” observed according to him in the areas previously occupied by the Russian army after the start of the invasion on February 24, “including underage girls and toddlers children ”
“Almost daily, new mass graves are found,” said Mr. Zelensky, who was addressing the Lithuanian parliament by video link. “We continue to find bodies in the sewers and cellars.”
Vladimir Putin, whose country denies any abuse in Ukraine, on Tuesday described as “fake” the information accusing his soldiers of having massacred hundreds of civilians in Boutcha, a town in the northwestern suburbs of Kyiv, of where they withdrew in late March after failing to encircle Kyiv.
AFP had seen there on Saturday April 2 the lifeless bodies of at least twenty men wearing civilian clothes lying in a street in Boutcha. One of the men had his hands tied and the bodies were strewn over several hundred yards.
Around Kyiv, the bodies of six people killed by bullets found in a basement in the eastern suburbs, according to the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office, were added on Tuesday to hundreds of others, found in the past two weeks in the vicinity of the capital. .
In Andriïvka, a village 30 km west of Kyiv which was still on the front line a few weeks ago, AFP journalists witnessed the exhumation of the bodies of other victims, three men in civilian clothes.
Among them, that of Yuri Kravtchennia. According to his wife, Olessia, he was shot in the street just after the start of the Russian invasion, while standing with his hands up. As her remains emerged from the ground, Olessia screamed in pain and collapsed. “I can’t go on without him,” she said.
May 9 deadline
In the east, bordering Russia and where Moscow has made the total conquest of the Donbass its priority objective, Kyiv has announced that it expects a major offensive in the short term.
“According to our information, the enemy has almost completed its preparation for an attack on the east. The attack will take place very soon,” warned Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandre Motouzianik.
Civilians continued to flee the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, from where six evacuation trains were to leave on Tuesday according to the regional administration.
Analysts believe that Vladimir Putin, mired in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, wants to secure a victory in this region before the May 9 military parade in Red Square marking the Soviet victory over the Nazis in 1945.
Visiting the Russian Far East on Tuesday, Mr. Putin assured that the offensive of his forces in Ukraine was continuing “in accordance with the plan proposed from the start by the general staff”.
He said that if the negotiations, now at a standstill, did not work out, it was because of the “inconsistencies” of the Ukrainian side.
Kyiv, for its part, confirmed that the negotiations were “extremely difficult” with Moscow.
Vladimir Putin has in fact “decided that he will not stop”, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published on Tuesday, saying he believed “rather little in our collective ability to put him around a negotiating table at short term “.
Arrest of a relative of Putin
In the immediate future, Mr. Zelensky proposed Tuesday evening in Moscow to “exchange” the Ukrainian deputy and businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, close to President Putin, against the Ukrainians in captivity in Russia.
The Ukrainian authorities had earlier in the day announced the arrest of this 67-year-old Ukrainian, under house arrest since May 2021 after being charged with “high treason” and “attempted looting of natural resources in Crimea”, and in leak since late February.
Viktor Medvedchuk, 12and fortune of Ukraine in 2021 with 620 million dollars according to Forbes magazine, is known for his links with Vladimir Putin who is, according to the person concerned, the godfather of one of his daughters.
More than 4.6 million Ukrainian refugees have fled their country since the invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin on February 24, according to the latest figures published on Tuesday by the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The war in Ukraine has triggered a chain reaction in the global economy with rising energy and food prices that will deepen poverty and hunger, and increase the debt burden, the President of the World Bank.