A building destroyed by bombing in Kyiv on April 29, 2022 in Ukraine ( AFP / Genya SAVILOV )
Russia confirmed Friday it had bombed Kyiv the day before amid a visit by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a strike that killed a Ukrainian journalist from Radio Liberty, an emblematic media outlet funded by the United States.
At the same time, Mariupol, the major martyred port city in the south-east, essentially fell into Russian hands, but where evacuation of civilians trapped with Ukrainian soldiers in the Azovstal steelworks was planned on Friday, an AFP team heard heavy shelling of the steel complex, which at that time did not seem to allow such an operation.
Russia has confirmed it attacked the capital the day before and claims to have attacked military and strategic targets even though the UN Secretary-General was there.
“Russian forces have destroyed the workshops of the space company Artyom” in the Ukrainian capital with high-precision long-range weapons, the Russian Defense Ministry said in particular.
That bombing left ten wounded and at least one dead: Vira Ghyrytch, a Ukrainian journalist with Radio Liberty, a media outlet funded by the US Congress in Eastern Europe since the Cold War era. The journalist’s body was found in the rubble of her building.
“If this is a high-precision attack, it’s really cynical. It’s inhumane,” said Mykhaïlo Vovtchynsky, a 22-year-old resident, on Friday.
The attack came while the United Nations chief, who made his first trip to Ukraine on Wednesday and Thursday since the Russian invasion began on February 24, was in Kyiv.
Germany and France sharply condemned this, Berlin stressed that these strikes had shown once again “that (Vladimir) Putin and his regime are disregarding international law”.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regretted in a video address on Friday evening “that such a brutal and deliberate humiliation of the United Nations has remained unanswered”.
While the Russian president, like his Ukrainian counterpart, was invited to the G20 summit planned for November in Indonesia, the US refused to “treat Vladimir Putin as if nothing had happened”.
The Pentagon even accused the Russian president on Friday of “depravity” and “cruelty” for the behavior of Russian forces in Ukraine. “It’s hard to look at some footage and imagine any serious leader would do that,” spokesman John Kirby said.
– “Difficult” in Kharkiv –
On the ground, Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged that the situation in the Kharkiv region, the largest northeastern city in the area where Russian forces have refocused their offensive, is “difficult”.
“But our military is making tactical gains,” he said.
This is particularly the case in Rouska Lozova, a village north of Kharkiv taken over by the Ukrainians, from where Russian troops say they bombed the city. The village was liberated after intense fighting.
“We had two nights that were scary as hell… The night before last we thought the sky was on fire, the whole village was on fire,” said 23-year-old Svitlana Perepilitsa.
Further south and east, in the Donbass region, which the Kremlin aims to completely recapture, “the occupiers are doing everything they can to destroy all life,” asserted Volodymyr Zelenskyy, considering that “the constant bombing of infrastructure and inhabited areas show that Russia wants to make this area uninhabited.”
The Russian offensive in Donbass “has been delayed,” a senior Pentagon official said Friday, “far from breaking the link between the troops that entered from the Kharkiv region (east) north of the Donbass and those coming from the south of the country, one of the targets of the Russian army to use pincers to overwhelm Ukrainian forces stationed on the front lines around the Donetsk and Lugansk separatist zones.
But “we believe they continue to create the conditions for a sustained, larger, and longer offensive,” the senior Defense Department official added.
– British investigators –
On Thursday, United Nations coordinator in Ukraine Osnat Lubrani said he would go south to prepare an evacuation attempt in Mariupol, with Mr Guterres assuring the UN was doing “everything possible” to help civilians trapped in “the… Apocalypse” were trapped to get out.
Map showing destruction and damage to buildings in the area of Azovstal complex in Mariupol on April 25, according to Unosat satellite analysis (AFP/)
The UN Secretary-General on Thursday traveled to Buchha and other locations near Kyiv, where Ukraine blamed Russian forces for abuses and urged Moscow to “cooperate” with the ICC’s investigation into possible war crimes.
At the same time, the services of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova revealed that ten Russian soldiers have been charged with alleged war crimes in Boutcha.
This is the first such measurement since the bodies of twenty people in civilian clothes were discovered by AFP on April 2 lying on a street in the locality, sparking condemnation and uproar around the world.
The Ukrainians blamed the Russians, but Moscow denied any responsibility and spoke of Kiev’s “staging”.
Fire following a bombardment at a depot at Lyman railway station in eastern Ukraine on April 28, 2022 ( AFP / Yasuyoshi CHIBA )
In total, “more than 8,000 cases” of suspected war crimes have been identified in Ukraine, the prosecutor said.
In this context, the UK will send investigators to help their Ukrainian counterparts, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Friday.
– better protect refugees –
Norway will follow in the footsteps of the European Union, of which it is not a member, by closing its ports to Russian ships except trawlers, while a first ship loaded with corn from Ukraine left the Romanian port of Constanta on 27 Black Sea on Friday, marking the resumption of grain exports from that country.
Women and children on a train at Kramatorsk station fleeing Donbass region, April 4, 2022 ( AFP / FADEL SENNA )
More than 5.4 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the Russian invasion began, including 57,000 in the past 24 hours, the United Nations found.
But Poland, where 3,033,000 people who fled the conflict in Ukraine have entered, according to border guards, “urgently” needs to step up prevention and surveillance measures to protect them, especially women, victims of trafficking, violence and rape, the NGO Human Rights Watch warned on Friday.
In addition, around 8,000 British soldiers will take part in maneuvers in Eastern Europe together with NATO soldiers this summer to “demonstrate solidarity and strength”.
A 22-year-old former US Marine was killed in Ukraine, where he left in mid-March to fight Russian forces, family members said, and the Pentagon on Friday urged Americans “not” to go to the country.
A UK-based non-profit organization, Presidium Network, reported that two British aid workers were arrested by Russian soldiers at a checkpoint on Monday.