According to reports, some of the first civilians evacuated from a giant steel plant in Mariupol arrived in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday. after an overnight bus ride blocked by delays at the front line. More than 100 civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant, Ukraine’s military police said in a statement. statement. Hundreds of people are believed to remain trapped in the last stronghold of the resistance in the city.
A Russian rocket hit the port city of Odessa, in southwestern Ukraine, on the Black Sea, causing deaths and injuries. The attack hit a strategically important bridge across the Dniester estuary. A 14-year-old boy was killed and a 17-year-old girl was injured, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday. “How did these children and the bedroom threaten the Russian state?” Zelenskiy said in the nightly video address of him.
Russian forces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where most of the fighting is taking place, suffer from poor command and control, low morale and less-than-ideal logistics, the US says.. “We continue to see minimal progress, at best, by the Russians in Donbas,” a senior US Defense Department official said.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) has said that the number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion has exceeded 3,000 people. Most of the victims were killed by explosive weapons with a wide impact area, such as missile strikes and air strikes, the human rights office said, without claiming responsibility.
Russian troops are reportedly destroying historic graves in Ukraine’s Kherson region, according to Ukrainian officials. Via Twitter, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported that Russian troops were destroying 1,000-year-old Scythian tombs in Kherson by “arranging firing positions on them.”
Russia plans to annex Donetsk and Luhansk after failing to win kyiv and topple the government there, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe told reporters. Russia could also consider doing the same in Kherson, where it is already imposing rubles as the official currency.
The director of the United Nations World Food Program in Germany has warned that millions of tons of grain are stuck in Ukraine as seaports are blocked by Russian military action. Martin Frick said that around 4.5 million tons of grain in containers in Ukrainian ports could not be moved due to unsafe or busy sea lanes, some of which had been mined, as well as inaccessible ports.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked to address how Russia could say it needed to “denazify” the country when its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is Jewish., in an interview with Italian television. Lavrov replied that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that “the most rabid anti-Semites tend to be Jews” while defending Russia’s policy of “denazification” in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s term for a radical purge that Ukraine says is a pretext for “murders in dough”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Lavrov’s comments showed that “Russia has forgotten all the lessons of World War II.” Israel summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology, and world leaders condemned the comments.
Britain has said it will provide a further 300 million pounds ($375 million) in military aid to Ukraine. including electronic warfare equipment and a counter-battery radar system, plus around £200m of assistance so far, Reuters reports.
Boris Johnson will hail Ukraine’s resistance against tyranny as an example to the world when he delivers a virtual speech to the country’s parliament on Tuesday. Johnson will become the first world leader to address the Verkhovna Rada since the conflict began.
More than 70 of the 90 M-777 howitzers that the United States planned to send are now in Ukrainian hands.along with more than 140,000 155mm rounds, a senior US defense department official said.
The European energy commissioner has said that Russia’s demands that fuel payments be made in rubles had to be rejected. despite the risks of a supply interruption at a time without alternative gas supply. Following a meeting of EU energy ministers, Kadri Simson said all energy ministers had agreed that paying in rubles through the mechanism set up by Russia would violate sanctions imposed by the bloc after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Germany said it was prepared to back an immediate EU embargo on Russian oil., a major change from Moscow’s biggest energy customer that could allow Europe to impose such a ban in a matter of days. “We have managed to reach a situation where Germany can withstand an oil embargo,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday in Brussels, where he met with EU colleagues. “This means that it will not be without consequences.”
Russia has diverted Internet traffic in the occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson through Russian communications infrastructure.Internet service outage monitor NetBlocks said Monday.
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has banned Russian football clubs from participating in the 2022-23 seasons in the Champions League, Europa League and UEFA Nations League. Russia’s bid to host the Euro 2028 and Euro 2032 tournaments is also ineligible.
Reference-www.theguardian.com