Sixty people were killed in the bombing of a school in the Lugansk region of eastern Ukraine on Saturday, all of them civilians, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said on Sunday.
Further south, in Mariupol, the last entrenched fighters feared the final attack this Sunday, on the eve of an important military parade in Moscow.
Yesterday, without going any further, in the town of Bilogorivka, in the Lugansk region, a Russian bomb killed 60 civilians,” Zelensky said during a videoconference intervention at a G7 summit.
“They were trying to take shelter in an ordinary school building that was targeted by a Russian aerial bombardment,” he added. “A bomb hit a school and 60 people died under the rubble,” the governor of the Lugansk region, Serguii Gaidai, told ‘Current Time TV’.
“There is still very heavy shelling on Bilogorivka,” he added.
“I would really like to believe that there are still people who are alive there,” he said, adding: “As soon as the shelling stops, we can start removing the rubble.”
On Sunday morning, Gaidai had declared that “there were a total of 90 people” at the scene when the bombing took place, of whom 27 saved their lives according to him.
‘Evil returned’
The enemy does not cease its offensive operations in the eastern operational zone to establish full control on the territory of the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson regions
On the Russian side, the Defense Ministry claimed Sunday the destruction of the “command post of a mechanized brigade” in the Kharkov region (east), as well as “the communication center of the Chervonoglinskoye military airfield, near Artsyz”.
for days, Ukrainian authorities warn against the possible intensification of Russian attacks on the eve of the commemoration of May 9the date on which Moscow celebrates the victory against Nazi Germany in 1945.
The Ukrainian president, who this Sunday has to participate in a telematic meeting of the leaders of the G7 powers, wanted to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II with a message comparing the current situation.
“Decades after World War II, darkness returned to Ukraine,” the president said in a black-and-white video posted on social media.
“Evil is back, in a different uniform, with different slogans, but with the same goal,” he warned, attempting to turn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “anti-Nazi” rhetoric against him.
Putin also took advantage of the date to draw numerous comparisons between the Second World War and the conflict in Ukraine and reaffirm Russian objectives.
“Today our soldiers, like their ancestors, are fighting shoulder to shoulder for the liberation of their homeland from Nazi filth, confident that, as in 1945, victory will be ours,” Putin said, on the eve of the celebrations of the Victory Day.
Evacuated civilians
In Mariupol, after multiple attempts, civilians were evacuated from the Azovstal steelworks, Zelensky said on Saturday night. “Now we are preparing the second phase (…): the wounded and the medical personnel.”
Hundreds of civilians took refuge in the intricate network of galleries of the huge Azovstal steel complex, where the last Ukrainian fighters from Mariupol are also found.
Moscow had announced on Wednesday a three-day unilateral ceasefire from Thursday in order to evacuate civilians. But according to the Ukrainian authorities, Russian forces attacked the factory during these days.
The order of the (Ukrainian) president was executed: all women, children and elderly people were evacuated from Azovstal.”
“The order of the (Ukrainian) president was executed: all women, children and elderly people were evacuated from Azovstal,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced on Saturday.
According to kyiv, these operations, sponsored by the UN and the Red Cross, allowed the removal of nearly 500 people in a week.
And, “of course, we also work to evacuate our military. All these heroes who defend Mariupol,” continued the president, without giving figures. “It’s extremely difficult, but it’s very important.”
“I will fight until the end”
According to Yevgenia Tytarenko, a military nurse whose husband, a nurse and member of the Azov battalion, and his companions are still inside the steel mill, “many soldiers are in serious condition, wounded and have no medicine.” “There is also a lack of food and water.”
“I will fight until the end,” her husband Mijailo wrote to her in an SMS that AFP was able to consult. They were married two days before the Russian invasion.
“Our units in the Azovstal factory area are still blocked,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in its report on Sunday morning, mentioning “Russian assault operations” “supported by artillery and tank fire.” .
Mariupol, a southeastern port city that had about 500,000 inhabitants before the war, has been almost totally destroyed after two months of Russian bombing.
Between Friday and Saturday, Russian forces made limited progress around Severodonetsk.one of the main towns in Donbas still in Ukrainian hands.
So far Russia can only claim complete control of one major city, Kherson.
In Kharkov, the Ukrainian counteroffensive to keep Ukraine’s second city from coming within range of enemy artillery was gaining ground, with several Russian positions seized, the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Saturday.
“Ukrainian forces gain ground in a wide arc near Kharkiv and are no longer focused on a limited advancedemonstrating an ability to launch offensive operations on a larger scale than hitherto in this war,” the center said.
To the point that the Russian army had to blow up three bridges “to stop the counteroffensive” in this region, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
The Ukrainian Navy also claimed to have destroyed a hundred kilometers off the coast of Odessa, the Russian landing ship “Serna”, thanks to a combat drone. This information was not confirmed by Russia, which stated instead that it sank “the Ukrainian assault ship ‘Stanislav'”.
AFP
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