Kiev, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine is preparing to take control of the besieged industrial east after Russian forces withdrew from the devastated suburbs of Kiev to regroup and escalate attacks in the Donbas region, where of the authorities the people evacuated in time. The deadline will expire.
The mayor of the southern port city of Mariupol said on Wednesday that more than 5,000 civilians had been killed there. Meanwhile, in the northern districts of the capital, Ukrainian officials have gathered evidence of Russia’s atrocities against Moscow troops who brutally killed people before retreating in recent days.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky warned in an overnight speech that the Russian military was mobilizing forces for a new offensive in the east, in which the Kremlin said its goal was to “liberate” the Donbas, the industrial center, who mostly speak Russian in Ukraine. According to him, Ukraine is also preparing for the battle.
“We will fight and we will not back down,” he said. “We are looking for all possible options to protect ourselves until Russia begins to seriously seek peace. This is our land. This is our future. And we will not give up. “
Ukrainian authorities are urging the citizens of the Donbas to evacuate immediately.
“People will be on fire later,” said Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk, “and we can do nothing to help them.”
A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia had already completed the removal of 24,000 or more troops from the northern regions of Kiev and Chernigov, sending them to Belarus or Russia to re-supply and regroup, maybe come back. East.
But a Western official, who also spoke on condition of remaining anonymous to consider intelligence assessments, said it would take about a month for Russian forces to reorganize the war in eastern Ukraine in one second.
Meanwhile, the United States and its Western allies have acted to impose new sanctions on the Kremlin for killings that label them as war crimes.
Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed in the weeks before Russia’s bombing and street fighting, 210 were children. Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one in which 50 people were burned, he said.
Boichenko said more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed. Attacks on strategic cities on the Sea of Azov cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and destroyed homes and businesses.
British defense officials said 160,000 people were trapped in the city, with a pre -war population of 430,000. A humanitarian aid convoy accompanied by the Red Cross spent several days trying to get into the city.
The acquisition of Mariupol would allow Russia to provide a continuous land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow took over from Ukraine in 2014.
In the north, Ukrainian authorities said they found the bodies of 410 civilians in the city near Kiev, victims of what Zelensky described as a campaign of murder, rape, segregation and torture in Russia. Some of the victims were allegedly shot at close range. Some were found handcuffed.
In his speech Wednesday night, Zelensky accused Russia of interfering in an international investigation into possible war crimes by removing corpses and attempting to hide other evidence in Bucha, northwest of Kiev. .
“We have information that Russian troops have changed tactics and are trying to evacuate the dead, the dead Ukrainians, from the streets and underground of the occupied territories,” he said. “It’s just an attempt to hide the evidence and nothing more.”
When he moved from Ukraine to Russia, Zelensky called on ordinary Russians to “face Russia’s oppressive machine in some way” rather than “equate their whole lives with the Nazis.”
He called on the Russians to demand an end to the war, “if you are a little ashamed of what the Russian army is doing in Ukraine”.
In response to alleged brutality outside Kiev, the United States announced sanctions against Putin’s two adult daughters and said sanctions against Russian banks were tightening. Britain has banned investments in Russia and has vowed to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year.
The U.S. Senate on Thursday planned to pass a law to sever normal trade relations with Russia and codify President Joe Biden’s executive actions banning Russia’s oil imports. The trade disruption would allow Biden to impose higher tariffs on some Russian imports.
The EU will also take additional disciplinary measures, including a coal embargo.
The Kremlin claims that its troops have not committed war crimes and claims that Bucha’s images were staged by Ukrainians.
They had to collect more corpses in Bucha. The Associated Press found the two houses in a quiet area. Occasionally there was a muffled boom of workers clearing the city of mines and other unexploded ordnance.
Cemetery workers began loading more than 60 corpses into a food truck to be delivered to the facility for further examination.
Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv district west of Kiev. Residents of the village of Andriyvka said the Russians arrived in early March and confiscated phones from locals. Several people were arrested, then released. Others encounter an uncertain fate. Some describe several weeks of shelter in cellars commonly used to store vegetables.
“At first we were scared, but now we’re in hysteria,” said Valentina Klimenko, 64. She said she, her husband and two neighbors endured the siege by sleeping on a pile of potatoes covered by a mattress. and blankets. “We didn’t cry from the start. “Now we’re crying.”
North of the village, in the town of Borodyanka, rescuers searched the ruins of residential buildings and searched for corpses.
Attempts to capture the capital quickly failed, with a growing number of Putin’s troops moving to the Donbass along with mercenaries.
Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russian -backed separatists in the Donbas since 2014. Prior to the invasion on February 24, Moscow recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states.
The US and UK boycotted an informal UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, which asked Russia to justify its claims that the US has biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine. The conference is the latest in a series of measures by Russia that have accused Western countries of using the UN’s disinformation platform to divert attention from the war.
Russia has previously denied the allegations. Ukraine owns and operates a network of biological laboratories that have received funding and research support from the United States and it is no secret. Laboratories are part of a program designed to reduce the possibility of deadly explosions, whether natural or man -made.
U.S. efforts began in the 1990s to dismantle the weapons of the former Soviet Union’s mass destruction program.
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Alexander Stashevsky and Kara Anna Bucha in Ukraine, Edith M. UN leaders, Yura Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Associated Press reporters from around the world contributed to this report.
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Source: Huffpost
