Finally a hope for the civilians locked up in Mariupol. “Twenty civilians, women and children”, were exfiltrated from the Azovstal steelworks, according to the deputy commander of the Ukrainian regiment Azov, on the night of Saturday to Sunday. The steelworks is the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, a city in eastern Ukraine besieged for more than 50 days by Russian forces. A few hours earlier, the official Russian agency Tass had announced that a group of 25 civilians, including six children, had been able to leave Azovstal. Follow our live.
Russian pressure is intensifying in eastern Ukraine. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian forces “formed reinforcements in the Kharkiv region, trying to increase the pressure in the Donbass”. “We are currently unable to push back the enemy”explained to AFP Iryna Rybakova, press officer of the 93rd brigade of the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian army, however, took over Rouska Lozova, a village of a few thousand inhabitants near Kharkiv on Friday.
Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson speak with Volodymyr Zelensky. On the phone with the Ukrainian President, Emmanuel Macron notably promised yesterday to “to strenghten” French efforts in support of Ukraine, in humanitarian aid and in the delivery of defense weapons. Later in the day, the British Prime Minister also said he had telephoned his Ukrainian counterpart in a tweetadding that “the UK will continue to provide military and humanitarian aid” in Kyiv.
The bodies of three men with their hands tied were found buried near Boutcha. “The victims were tortured for a long time. Eventually, each of them was shot in the temple”said yesterday in a press release the chief of the police of the kyiv region, Andriï Nebytov. “The victims had their hands tied, clothes around their faces so they couldn’t see anything and some had gags in their mouths”he added. “According to preliminary data, the occupiers tried to hide the traces of their violence, so they threw the bodies into a pit and covered them with earth”, said Andriï Nebytov. kyiv blames Russian forces of having committed massacres after the discovery of dozens of corpses wearing civilian clothes in these localities occupied and then abandoned by the Russian army around kyiv.