Some of the first evacuees from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol they are due to arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday tomorrow, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On Sunday, around 100 civilians were evacuated from the plant, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the city. Zelenskiy said he expected “all necessary conditions” to be met to allow the evacuation to continue on Monday.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has become the highest-ranking US official to visit Ukraine since the outbreak of the war, where she met with President Zelenskiy. In a subsequent news conference, Pelosi said the United States would not be intimidated. “If they’re making threats, you can’t back down,” he said. Pelosi received the Order of the Princess of Olga medal from Zelenskiy.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied that Russia is demanding Zelenskiy’s “surrender” as a condition for peace, or that Russia intends to claim victory in Ukraine by May 9. “The pace of the operation in Ukraine depends, first of all, on the need to minimize risks to the civilian population and Russian military personnel,” he told Italian broadcaster Mediaset.
Russia’s latest attacks, including on grain warehouses and residential neighborhoods, “prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of extermination for the Russian military.” Zelenskiy has said in his late-night speech on Sunday, asking, “What could be Russia’s strategic success in this war?” Ruined people’s lives and burned or stolen property will give Russia nothing.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to continue supporting Ukraine with money, aid and weapons, saying a pacifist approach to the war is “outdated”. His comments at a May Day rally in Düsseldorf were an implicit rebuke to a group of intellectuals, lawyers and creatives who condemned Russia’s war of aggression in an open letter but urged Scholz not to send heavy weapons to Ukraine. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz will reportedly travel to kyiv on Monday.
Pope Francis described the war in Ukraine as a “grim regression of humanity” that makes him “suffer and cry,” in a Sunday noon address in St. Peter’s Square. “My thoughts immediately go to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city of Mary, barbarously bombed and destroyed,” he said of the mainly Russian-controlled southeastern port city, which is named after the Virgin Mary.
The governor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv urged people not to leave shelters on Sunday due to heavy shelling. Destination in telegramOleh Synyehubov said: “In connection with the heavy shelling, we urge the residents of the northern and eastern districts of Kharkiv, in particular Saltivka, not to leave the shelter during the day without urgency.”
The Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed an attack on an airfield near Odessa on Saturday. He said his forces had destroyed a runway and hangar at an airfield, which contained weapons supplied by the US and the EU.
A fire broke out on a Russian Defense Ministry site in Belgorod on Sunday., near the border with Ukraine, said the governor of the region, injuring one person. “On the borders of three municipalities, Borisov, Belgorod and the Yakovlevsky urban district, a fire broke out in one of the facilities of the Ministry of Defense,” the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram.
The European Union could phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year, according to the latest set of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s war machine being discussed in Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said for weeks that the EU is working on sanctions against Russian oil, but the key question is how and when the commodity will be removed.
Russia’s online trolling operation is becoming increasingly decentralized and gaining “incredible traction” on TikTok with disinformation aimed at sowing doubts about the events in Ukraine, An American social media researcher has warned. Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University, South Carolina, who has been studying the operation of the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) troll farm since 2017, said he was managing to create posts that seemed more authentic.
Reference-www.theguardian.com