The war in Ukraine can only be ended through biases “diplomatics”, assured Saturday, May 21, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The war “will be bloody, it will be fighting, but it will end definitively via diplomacy”did he declare during an interview with a Ukrainian television channel. On Tuesday, one of his advisers, Mykhailo Podoliak, reported that the talks between Moscow and Kyiv were “on break”. Follow our live.
The Azovstal steelworks under Russian control. In the early evening of Friday, the spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the steel complex located in Mariupol was “passed under the complete control of the Russian Armed Forces” after the surrender of the last Ukrainian soldiers. Footage released by Moscow showed cohorts of men in combat gear emerging from the steelworks, some with crutches or bandages, after a long battle that had become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. For its part, kyiv rejects the term surrender, Volodymyr Zelensky evoking “rescuing our heroes”.
Russian gas for Finland has been cut off. Russia’s gas supply to Finland was cut off on Saturday, Finland’s state-owned energy company Gasum said, after the Nordic country refused to pay supplier Gazprom in roubles. She added that the gas would now be supplied from other sources via the Balticconnector gas pipeline, which connects Finland to Estonia.
“Intense fire” in the Donbass. After failing to take kyiv and Kharkiv, Russia is concentrating its military efforts in the East and South. “The enemy is constantly carrying out offensive operations in the eastern operational zone in order to establish full control of the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and to maintain the land corridor with the temporarily occupied Crimea”, described the staff of the Ukrainian forces on Facebook on Saturday morning. In the Donbass coalfield, partially controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu assured that the conquest of the Lugansk region was “almost complete”. Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motouzianyk argued that the situation “showed signs of worsening” and “The Russian occupation forces are carrying out intense fire along the entire front line”.