প্রকাশ: 01/05/2022
Ukraine's shelling killed and injured its own civilians in
the southern region of Kherson, Russia said on Sunday, after pounding southern
and eastern areas with missile strikes, while some civilians got away from a
steel plant in besieged Mariupol, reports Reuters.
Moscow has turned its focus to Ukraine's south and east
after failing to capture the capital Kyiv in a nine-week assault that has
flattened cities, killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 5 million
to flee abroad.
Its forces have captured the town of Kherson, giving them a
foothold just 100 km (60 miles) north of Russian-annexed Crimea, and have
mostly occupied Mariupol, the strategic eastern port city on the Azov Sea.
Russia's defence ministry accused Ukraine's forces of
shelling a school, kindergarten and cemetery in the villages of Kyselivka and
Shyroka Balka in the Kherson region, the Russian RIA news agency said on
Sunday.
The ministry gave no further details. There was no immediate
response from Ukraine to the report, which Reuters could not independently
verify.
Russia declared victory in Mariupol on April 21, even as
hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians took shelter in the Azovstal steel
works.
The United Nations has urged an evacuation deal. On Saturday
a Ukrainian fighter inside said some 20 women and children had made it out.
"We are getting civilians out of the rubble with ropes
- it's the elderly, women and children," said the fighter, Sviatoslav
Palamar, referring to wreckage within the plant, which sprawls 4 sq km (1.5 sq
miles).
Palamar said Russia and Ukraine were respecting a local
ceasefire, and he hoped the evacuated civilians would be taken to the Ukrainian
city of Zaporizhzhia to the northwest.
There was no comment from Russia or the United Nations on
the evacuations. Hundreds of Ukrainians remain inside the steel works,
Ukrainian officials say.
A Russian missile launched from Crimea destroyed the runway
at the main airport in the city of Odesa to the west, said regional governor
Maksym Marchenko, but no one was hurt.
The airport could no longer be used, Ukraine's military
said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed to rebuild it, saying in a late-night
video speech, "Odesa will never forget Russia's behaviour towards
it."
There was no comment on the strike from Moscow, whose forces
have sporadically targeted Ukraine's third-largest city, where eight people
were killed in a recent Russian strike, Ukrainian officials said.
Moscow's assault in the south aims in part to link the area
with Crimea as it pushes for complete control of Ukraine's eastern Donbas
region, where Russian-backed separatists already controlled parts of Luhansk
and Donetsk provinces before Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion.
In his speech, Zelenskiy said Russia was "gathering
additional forces for new attacks against our military in the east of the
country" and "trying to increase pressure in the Donbas".
Moscow calls its actions a "special operation" to
disarm Ukraine and rid it of anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West.
Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
Despite weeks of peace talks, both sides looked to be as far
apart as ever on Saturday.
Ukraine accuses Russian troops of carrying out atrocities in
areas near Kyiv in early April, a claim denied by Moscow. Negotiators last met
face-to-face on March 29, and have since spoken by video link.
The United States and its European allies have imposed
sweeping sanctions on Russia's economy and supplied Ukraine with weapons and
humanitarian aid.
Britain will continue "to give the Ukrainians the
equipment they need to defend themselves", Prime Minister Boris Johnson
said on Saturday.
U.S. President Joe Biden is seeking a $33 billion aid
package for Kyiv, including $20 billion for weapons.
Biden praised the courage of journalists covering the
Russian invasion of Ukraine in comments at the White House Correspondents'
Association dinner in Washington.
"A poison is running through our democracy... with
disinformation massively on the rise," Biden said on Saturday night.
"You, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last
century."
Britain's Foreign Office warned on Sunday that Russia was
using a troll factory to spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine on
social media.
"We cannot allow the Kremlin and its shady troll farms
to invade our online spaces with their lies about Putin’s illegal war,"
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.
In the town of Dobropillia in Donetsk, the shockwave from a
strike on Saturday blew in the windows of an apartment building and left a large
crater in the yard.
Standing in his living room, a resident who gave only his
first name, Andriy, said his partner was knocked unconscious. "Thank God
the four children were in the kitchen," he said.
People sifted belongings to salvage what they could.
"At around 9:20 a.m. this happiness flew to our
house," said another resident, Oleh, sarcastically. "Everything is
destroyed."
Russia reported more Ukrainian strikes on its territory.
Officials in the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine and
Belarus, said air defences had kept out a Ukrainian aircraft, but the resulting
shelling hit parts of a Russian oil terminal.
South of Bryansk, in Kursk, another border region, several
shells were fired from Ukraine toward a Russian checkpoint, said the regional
governor, Roman Starovoit, but with no casualties or damage.
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for such incidents
but it described a series of blasts in Russia's south on Wednesday as payback
and "karma" for Moscow's invasion.
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