(Zaporijjia) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to address the Ukrainian parliament via videoconference on Tuesday, a first for a Western leader since the start of the war, as Ukrainians continue their efforts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol.
Posted at 6:55 a.m.
“Mariupol: the evacuation continues”, announced the Ukrainian presidency on Tuesday in its morning report based on information provided by the regional administrations.
The municipal council of this industrial port in the south of Donbass, almost conquered by the Russians, announced Monday evening an agreement for an evacuation with the support of the UN and the Red Cross. The meeting point was set for 7 a.m. (12 a.m. EDT), but away from Mariupol, at a roundabout near Berdyansk some 70 km away.
This weekend, for the first time in two months of siege and bombing, a hundred civilians holed up in the cellars of the huge Azovstal steelworks, the last pocket of resistance in the city.
But on Monday, in Zaporijjia, 200 km to the northwest, a parking lot transformed into a reception point for refugees saw no convoy arriving from Mariupol.
In the evening, the Azov regiment, which participates in the defense of the steel plant, explained “that after the partial evacuation of civilians from the territory of Azovstal, the enemy continues to fire on the territory of the plant, including buildings where civilians are hiding”.
According to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, “hundreds of civilians” remain “stranded in Azovstal”.
After living for weeks in underground shelters or cloistered at home, the inhabitants of the city came out to discover their once vibrant city in ruins, AFP noted during a trip organized by the Russian army.
“Hour of Glory”
In the rest of the country, “the enemy continued to fire on the city of Kharkiv and neighboring localities”, indicated the staff of the Ukrainian army in its morning note about the second city of the country.
Further south, near Izium, the Russians “intensely” shelled the Ukrainian positions and in the Donbass they are trying “to take full control of the localities of Popasna and Rubizhne and to advance towards Lyman and Sloviansk”.
In southwestern Ukraine, the port of Odessa is again the target of Russian missiles and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Monday evening a Russian strike on a “dormitory”, in which a teenager died and a girl 17 year old was injured. “How did these children and the dormitory threaten the Russian state? That’s how they fight,” said Mr. Zelensky.
Ukrainians fear that Odessa is among Moscow’s targets, especially since a Russian general claimed that the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine was aimed at establishing a corridor from Russia to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, which would pass through Odessa .
East of Odessa, the center of Mykolaiv was hit on Monday evening, according to the presidency’s morning report. An investigation into possible “torture and murder” during the Russian occupation of a locality in this region has been launched, the services of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine also indicated on Telegram on Tuesday.
“According to the investigation, the bodies of two residents with traces of gunshot wounds were found in a mass grave in the village of Novofontanka” and “one of the men had his legs tied”, they specify.
Western allies are increasing their pressure on Moscow and their support for Kyiv with, around 9 a.m. GMT on Tuesday, a speech by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson by videoconference to the Ukrainian Parliament, a first for a Western leader since the start of the Russian invasion. .
“This is your hour of glory,” he must declare to Ukrainian MPs according to a Downing Street press release published Monday evening, drawing a parallel with the unity displayed by the Parliament and the British people during the Second World War. “We remember our time of great peril as our hour of glory,” he said in his speech.
Boris Johnson is to announce on this occasion new military aid to Kyiv worth 300 million pounds (357 million euros), including in particular defensive armament equipment.
So far, the UK has supplied Ukraine with 5,000 anti-tank missiles, five anti-aircraft missile systems with over 100 missiles and 4.5 tonnes of explosives.
Referendums in sight
The Europeans are working on their side to toughen their economic sanctions against Moscow. The European Commission is expected to propose a sixth sanctions package on Tuesday that includes a timetable for phasing out Russian oil imports, which account for 30% of European Union oil imports.
If the 27 Member States agree on this measure, the cessation of purchases of oil and petroleum products from Russia will be gradual, over six to eight months, but with measures with immediate effect, in particular a tax on transport by tankers, said a European official.
The new sanctions will also concern “the banking sector, there will be other Russian banks that will come out of Swift”, said Monday the high representative of the EU for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell.
The approach of May 9, the date when Russia celebrates victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, is fueling speculation about how Moscow could announce gains in Ukraine.
On Monday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense considered it possible that Moscow would take advantage of these celebrations to “raise the question” of the integration into the Russian Federation of the separatist and pro-Russian “republics” of Donbass, whose independence Moscow has recognized as just. before invading Ukraine.
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).
The governor of the Luhansk region said he expected “an intensification of the shelling” as May 9 approached.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, however, denied any particular Russian military action on this occasion, in an interview with the Italian television channel Mediaset broadcast on Sunday.