War in Ukraine, day 68 | New strikes on Odessa, Washington fears Russian “annexations”

(Zaporizhia) Russia resumed its strikes on Odessa, the major port city in southern Ukraine, on Monday with a missile launch that killed at least one person, as the United States accuses Moscow of wanting to “annex” two pro-Russian separatist territories in the east.

In addition, in Mariupol (southeast), a martyr city almost conquered by the Russians after weeks of siege, the evacuations of civilians started this weekend and expected all day seemed to be marking time.

In Odessa, “a missile strike” “damaged a building in which there were five people,” the Odessa City Council Telegram announced in the early evening. “A fifteen-year-old boy died, another minor child was taken to hospital,” he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced this attack on a “dormitory”: “How did these children and the dormitory threaten the Russian state? That’s how they fight.”

An Orthodox church dependent on the Moscow patriarchate had its roof torn off in the attack, for his part indicated the secretary of the Ukrainian Security Council, Oleksiï Danilov.

Odessa, a Russian-speaking city considered a major cultural center for both Ukrainians and Russians, has been attacked several times in recent weeks.

The airport was targeted by Russian missiles on Saturday, destroying its runway according to Ukrainian authorities. On April 23, strikes that hit a building in particular killed at least eight people, including a three-month-old baby, his mother and his grandmother.

Annexation attempts

Ukrainians fear that the city will be one of Russia’s next targets.

In Washington, the United States Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael Carpenter, reported “very credible” information that Russia intends to organize “by mid -May” referendums to “attempt to annex” the pro-Russian separatist “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, in Donbass (eastern Ukraine).

“Moscow is considering a similar project for Kherson”, a Ukrainian coastal city which the Russian administration took control of thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24, he added to the press.

“Such sham referendums, fabricated votes, will not be considered legitimate, nor will any attempt to annex other Ukrainian territories,” he insisted.

On Monday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense considered it possible that Moscow would use the celebrations of May 9, the date when Russia commemorates the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, to “raise the question” of integration into the Russian Federation pro-Russian “republics” of Donbass, whose independence Moscow recognized just before invading Ukraine.

All day Monday, the Ukrainian authorities hoped to be able to resume the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, which began this weekend with the exit of a hundred people from the immense Azovstal steelworks, the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in this strategic port. southern Donbass almost entirely under Russian control.

The logistics to welcome them had been set up in Zaporijjia, a town located some 200 km to the northwest, with vehicles from UNICEF and international NGOs waiting for them at a parking lot transformed into a reception point for refugees, AFP noted.

No convoy on Monday

But no convoy arrived in Zaporizhia on Monday. On Monday evening, a statement on Telegram from the Azov regiment, which participates in the defense of the steel plant, claimed “that after the partial evacuation of civilians from the territory of Azovstal, the enemy continues to fire on the territory of the ‘factory, including buildings where civilians are hiding’.

In a video posted on the Mariupol Azov Regiment channel, the regiment’s deputy commander, Svyatoslav Palamar, explained that the end of the ceasefire had been delayed on Monday, and that vehicles loaded with to evacuate the civilians had only arrived at the very end of the afternoon.

The evacuations, which began on Saturday in coordination between Ukraine, Russia, the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), had allowed, for the first time in two months of siege and bombing of the city, to evacuate “more than 100 civilians” holed up in the cellars of the steelworks, according to President Zelensky.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, however, recalled that “hundreds of civilians” remained “stranded in Azovstal”.

Ukrainians estimate that at least 20,000 people have died in Mariupol since the Russian siege began in early March.

In the rest of Donbass, the Russian forces continue their offensive, with particularly intense fighting around Izium, Lyman and Rubizhne, which the Russians are trying to “take control to prepare their attack on Severodonetsk”, one of the major cities of Donbass still controlled by Kyiv, the Ukrainian general staff said on Monday.

As May 9 approaches, the governor of the Luhansk region said he expected “an intensification of the shelling”.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied any particular Russian military action on this occasion, in an interview with the Italian television channel Mediaset broadcast on Sunday.

Lavrov and Hitler’s “Jewish Blood”

Asked by Mediaset about Russian claims that the war aims to “denazify” Ukraine when President Zelensky is Jewish, the head of Russian diplomacy caused an outcry by saying: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood.”

His Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid deemed these remarks “scandalous, unforgivable”, denounced “a horrible historical error”, and summoned the Russian ambassador for “clarifications”. Kyiv called them “odious”, and Berlin denounced an “absurd” statement. »

The Ukrainian army also claimed to have destroyed with Bayraktar drones two Russian Raptor-type patrol boats near Serpents’ Island, in the Black Sea, which has become one of the symbols of Ukrainian resistance.

New sanctions in sight

Western countries, which have accelerated their deliveries of heavy weapons to help Ukraine resist the Russian offensive, are gradually reopening their embassies in Kyiv, closed or moved to Lviv, in the west, at the beginning of the Russian invasion.

After several European countries, the United States hopes to “return to Kyiv by the end of the month” of May if the security conditions allow it, indicated from Lviv the American charge d’affaires Kristina Kvien.

The Europeans are working on their side to toughen their economic sanctions against Moscow. The energy ministers of the 27 mentioned Monday in Brussels a timetable for the gradual cessation of their imports of Russian oil, which represent 30% of their oil imports.

The EU reiterated on this occasion its refusal to pay in rubles for its purchases of Russian gas.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will address the Ukrainian parliament by videoconference on Tuesday, a first for a Western leader since the start of the Russian invasion, and announce 300 million pounds of additional military aid to Kyiv.

A contract with the Russian group Rosatom to build a nuclear reactor in northern Finland has also been canceled due to the additional “risks” linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Finnish-majority consortium said on Monday. the project.

Estimated at more than 7.5 billion euros, this 1,200 megawatt reactor project, located in Pyhajöki, dates back to 2010 and had already suffered from numerous delays and uncertainties.

Another major setback for Moscow: UEFA announced on Monday the exclusion of Russian clubs from its European competitions next season, including the lucrative Champions League.

Already excluded from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and suspended from all international competitions “until further notice”, Russia is thus seeing the range of sanctions widen and extend over time.