Ukraine announced on Saturday that the entire kyiv region has now been “liberated”, where Russian forces are conducting a “rapid withdrawal” from the north of the country, but to better “maintain control” in the “vast territory” they occupied to the east and to the south.
A martyred city in the southeast and a strategic port, Mariupol, on the other hand, remains in the grip of Russia. The humanitarian situation there was catastrophic, without knowing on Saturday night whether the evacuation of civilians expected by the Red Cross had been able to take place.
As Russian troops retreated as announced from the Kyiv and Cherniguiv (north) regions, Ukrainian forces recaptured dozens of localities, devastated by the fighting: Irpin, Boutcha, Gostomel and the entire Kyiv region were liberated from the invadersaid Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar.
These towns include Boutcha, northwest of kyiv, where about 300 people have to be buried. in mass gravestold AFP its mayor, Anatoly Fedorouk.
An AFP reporter saw the bodies of at least 20 men there dressed in civilian clothes, one of them with his hands tied behind his back, next to an open Ukrainian passport lying on the ground.
Gap holes caused by shells in apartment buildings, severed power lines: the city, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, was destroyed.
In nearby Irpin, demining operations continued on Saturday. According to emergency services, 643 explosive devices have been deactivated there since it returned to Ukrainian hands.
With rapid withdrawal from the north of the country, it is quite clear that Russia has chosen another priority tacticUkrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak wrote in Telegram messaging: back east and south for maintain control over vast territories and for that cruelly dictating the rules.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously claimed that the Russians are preparing for powerful attacks in the east of the country, especially in Mariupol, where 160,000 people are still believed to be stranded and where at least 5,000 residents have been killed, according to local authorities.
For Moscow, control of Mariupol would ensure the continuity of the territory from the Crimea to the two pro-Russian separatist republics of Donbass, Donetsk and Lugansk.
Unable to do so for several weeks, the evacuations began on a small scale. Friday, humanitarian corridors operate in three regions: Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporozhye. We were able to rescue 6266 people, including 3071 from Mariupolsaid President Zelensky on Friday night through Saturday.
The AFP witnessed the arrival of about 30 evacuation buses in the city of Zaporozhye on Friday night. We cried when we saw the soldiers at the checkpoint with Ukrainian patches on their armssaid Olena, her little girl in her arms. My house was destroyed. I’ve seen it in the photos. Our town is gone.
Several people told AFP they had to walk 15 kilometers or more to leave Mariupol before looking for private vehicles and then ending their trip on a 12-hour bus ride through a series of checkpoints. , instead of three hours before the war.
On Saturday, seven humanitarian corridors were planned in the east and southeast of the country, according to Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on Saturday offered maritime support, especially for the evacuation from Mariupol of civilians and wounded Turkish or other nationalitiesaccording to the official Anadolu news agency.
Also in the south, in Energodar, a city occupied by Russian forces, a demonstration of civilians broke out on Saturday by firing stun grenades that left four wounded, according to a Ukrainian official and according to in videos posted on the Internet.
In Russia, at least 211 people were arrested in 17 cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. Petersburg, for protesting against the war, says the expert NGO OVD-Info.
Seated demonstrations were announced on social networks in approximately thirty cities, from Vladivostok (Far East) to Sochi (south). The organizers wanted to protest the collapse of the Russian economy, against [le président russe Vladimir] Putin and for the release of imprisoned protagonist Alexei Navalny.
Without naming him, Pope Francis, who was traveling to the island of Malta, also denounced the Russian president. Some powerful, sadly confined to their anachronistic pretensions of nationalist interests, inciting and inciting conflictssaid the bishop in a clear allusion to the head of the Kremlin.
He added that he plans to visit Ukraine soon at the invitation of President Zelensky: Yes, on the tablehe said soberly.
On Friday, Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out a helicopter strike on its soil and threatened to intensify negotiations.
The attack hit the fuel storage facilities of energy giant Rosneft in Belgorod, a city in Russia about 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
For the British Ministry of Defense, the destruction of oil tanks in Belgorod as well as explosions at an ammunition depot near the city will increase. likely additional short -term pressure on Russia’s strained supply chains.
Ukraine warns that Russian soldiers who left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant – the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986 – after weeks of work could be exposed to radiation, saying that Russia acted irresponsibly at Chernobyl digging canals in contaminated areas and preventing plant personnel from performing their duties.
From Friday night to Saturday, several bombings took place, according to various Ukrainian sources: in residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv (east), in infrastructure in the Dnipro (center) as well as in localities in the Donetsk regions. , Lugansk (east) and Kherson (south).
It also hit infrastructure in Kremenchuk (central, Poltava region), headquarters of the largest Ukrainian oil refinery, the country’s presidency said, as the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Saturday morning that it had been destroyed using high precision weapons the fuel and diesel refinery depots.
These depots were used to supply fuel to Ukrainian forces in the middle and east of the country, according to a ministry statement.
From Russian missiles also decommissioned two military airfields in Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions (center), according to the same source.
Give us missiles. Give us planesappealed to President Zelensky on the American channel FoxNews. You can’t give us F-18s or F-19s or whatever you have? Give us the old Soviet planes […]. Give me something to defend my country.
The United States has announced up to $ 300 million more in military aid to Ukraine in addition to what has been allocated since the invasion, worth more than $ 1.6 billion.
Peace talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials continued via video on Friday, but the Kremlin warned that the attack in Belgorod could not is considered to create favorable conditions for the resumption of negotiations.
On Sunday, the Deputy Secretary General ofUN for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, was in Moscow to try to get a humanitarian ceasefireannounced by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday.
Source: Radio-Canada