KYIV | UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres travels Thursday to the suburbs of kyiv, to Boutcha, Irpin and Borodianka, theaters of abuses attributed to the Russian army, while Moscow continues its offensive in the east and south of Ukraine.
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For its part, the European Union on Wednesday accused Russia of “blackmail” after it had stopped the supply of gas to Poland and Bulgaria while the West continues its efforts to arm the Ukrainians against Russia.
The UN chief arrived in Ukraine from Moscow where he pleaded with Vladimir Putin for a ceasefire “as soon as possible”.
But on the ground, the Russian forces are stepping up their offensive, particularly in the region of Kharkiv and Donetsk, in the east of the country, the staff of the Ukrainian forces said Thursday morning.
Kyiv accuses the Russian forces of having committed massacres in Boutcha, Irpin and Borodianka, after the discovery of dozens of corpses wearing civilian clothes in these localities occupied and then abandoned by the Russian army.
On April 2, in Boutcha, AFP journalists discovered the horror: a street strewn with corpses. And the UN documented the “murder, including some by summary execution”, of 50 civilians, after a mission in the city.
On Wednesday, Canadian MPs passed a motion condemning Russia’s “acts of genocide against the Ukrainian people” and saying there is “clear and abundant evidence of systematic and massive war crimes and crimes against humanity.” “.
“Russian blackmail”
Britain on Wednesday called on Ukraine’s allies to show “courage” in stepping up military aid, arguing that the war in Ukraine was “our war” and Kyiv’s victory a “strategic imperative for all of us”. .
“Heavy weapons, tanks, planes – dig into our stocks, ramp up production, we have to do all that,” British Foreign Minister Liz Truss said in a speech in London on Wednesday evening.
The Russian president for his part again warned against any external intervention in the conflict in Ukraine, promising a “rapid and lightning” response.
Moscow is trying to target this military aid in the meantime, and the Russian Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday that “sheds with a large quantity of foreign weapons and ammunition, delivered to Ukrainian forces by the United States and European countries , had been destroyed with Kalibr missiles fired from the sea at the Zaporizhia aluminum plant in southern Ukraine.
The governor of this region, however, brought a firm denial: “No ammunition and arms depot has been affected in Zaporozhjia”, he retorted, hammering that the affected factory “has not been operational since six years”.
Russian troops are also bombing bridges and railways to slow down Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister said on Tuesday after the destruction of a strategic bridge linking this country to Romania.
Continuation of the Russian offensive
Russian forces, which have been stepping up their offensive in Donbass for two weeks, announced on Wednesday that they had carried out airstrikes on 59 Ukrainian targets.
At the same time, the Ukrainian army has, rare on its part, recognized Russian advances in the east, in the Kharkiv region and in the Donbass, a mining basin partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
Kyiv admitted that the Russians had taken localities stretching from north to south, suggesting that Moscow wants to take a vice in a large pocket still in the hands of the Ukrainians.
“We have extremely difficult weeks ahead,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to him, the Russian army, “already aware of its strategic defeat, will try to inflict as much suffering as possible” on the Ukrainian soldiers whom he urged to “hold on”.
In Kherson (south) – the first major city seized by Russian forces after their invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24 – “the occupiers threw tear gas canisters at Ukrainian demonstrators who chanted ‘Kherson is the Ukraine ̈”!”, the Ukrainian military said in a statement. Demonstrators “were injured and arrested”, added the same source.
“Save the Mariupol Garrison”
In Kharkiv, whose northern and eastern districts are less than 5 km from the front line, at least three people died and 15 were injured in shelling, Governor Oleg Synegoubov said.
At the southern tip of the Donbass, in the strategic port city of Mariupol, besieged and devastated, “the enemy is massively bombarding and blocking our units near the Azovstal factory”, affirmed for its part the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. in his daily report.
Commander of the 36th Mariupol Marine Brigade, Sergey Volyna, appealed for help again, saying he had 600 wounded soldiers and hundreds of civilians with him.
“My message today is: save the Mariupol garrison, carry out an exfiltration operation for us. People will just die here (…) civilians die with us (…) the city is almost erased from the face of the Earth”, he implored in a message relayed on Telegram.
According to Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich, “the efforts of the Russian invaders are concentrated around Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Mariupol” where they are trying to dislodge the Ukrainian soldiers barricaded in the Azovstal metallurgical complex and where there are also hundreds of civilians.
Efforts are being made, he said, to “force Vladimir Putin to release them”. “Civilians first, but we are also working to evacuate our soldiers,” he said.
The EU “united” against the Russian gas weapon
On the economic ground, the Russian group Gazprom announced on Wednesday that it had suspended all its gas deliveries to Bulgaria and Poland, ensuring that these two countries had not paid in rubles, as Vladimir Putin has demanded since March.
The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen denounced “gas blackmail” and affirmed that these two member countries of the EU and NATO, very dependent on Russian gas, were now supplied “by their neighbors in the ‘European Union”.
The European ministers in charge of energy will meet Monday, May 2 in “extraordinary session”, announced Wednesday evening the French minister in charge of the ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili.
These events come at a time when many chancelleries are worried about the risk of spreading the conflict, after a series of explosions, attributed by Kyiv to Moscow, in the pro-Russian separatist region of Transdniestria, in Moldova.
On Wednesday, authorities in the separatist territory said a border village hosting a major Russian army ammunition depot had come under fire from Ukraine.
To help Ukraine, the European Commission proposed on Wednesday to suspend all customs duties on products imported from this country into the EU for one year. The proposal still needs to be approved by the European Parliament and the 27 member states.
President Volodymir Zelensky welcomed the proposal, accusing Russia of “trying to cause a global price crisis” and “chaos” in the global food market.