Four weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army appears to be struggling in some sectors of the front, but is making progress in others. According to British sources, Ukrainian troops recaptured cities and defensive positions up to 35 kilometers east of Kiev. On the other hand, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the Russian troops may have managed to build a land bridge from the Donetsk region in the east to the Crimean peninsula.
According to a Russian agency report, the Russian Defense Ministry said it destroyed a large fuel depot near the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, as a result of a rocket attack. According to police, a clinic in the disputed Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine was hit by Russian fire. As a result, four people died. Two rockets also hit a Ukrainian military unit near the city of Dnieper. The region’s governor spoke of “severe damage.”
According to local authorities, the town of Slavutych north of Kiev is also surrounded by Russian troops. According to the statement, the attackers are located just outside the city limits. Workers involved in the maintenance of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant live in Sławutycz. In addition, Russian troops reportedly surrounded the city of Chernihiv in the north of Ukraine and cut it off from the surrounding area. Governor Wiatscheslav Tschhaus announced it on television.
According to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, the Russian armed forces are focused on the complete “liberation” of Donbas. According to the Russian news agency Ifax, an attack on the barricaded Ukrainian cities cannot be ruled out in general. In the case of the “special operation” in Ukraine, the ministry considered two options: either within the separatist areas of Donbas or throughout the territory of Ukraine.
However, according to American information, Russia has huge problems with its precisely guided missiles. The high-tech weapons used in the attack on Ukraine had a failure rate of up to 60 percent, US officials said, citing intelligence information to Reuters. According to the Russian General Staff, 1,351 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine and 3,825 were injured. None of this information can be independently verified.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government hopes that an evacuation corridor for the encircled Mariupol port will be opened next Friday. It should concern the civilian population that can leave South-East Ukraine in a private vehicle, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. Numerous vehicles are ready for evacuation in nearby Berdyansk. “There are currently 48 buses there,” said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereszczuk on Friday in the video. There is also a tanker for refueling private vehicles in the city, about 70 kilometers from Mariupol.
A corridor to the city of Zaporizhia for further escape was agreed with the Russian side. In addition, there is an agreement on another escape route from Russian-occupied Melitopol to Zaporizhia. Mariupol, once inhabited by 400,000, is one of the Ukrainian cities hardest hit by Russian attacks.
In the video, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky once again called on the West to do more for his country. At Thursday’s summits in Brussels, NATO, the G7 and the EU called on Russia to end the fighting immediately. On the second day of the summit, EU Heads of State and Government first discussed the issue of the deployment of war refugees and then want to consider how to respond to high energy prices.
Ukraine and Western countries talk about the aggressive war and the Russian invasion of a neighboring country, which began on February 24. In turn, Russia describes its actions in Ukraine as a special operation to destroy military bases and the demilitarization and “denazification” of Ukraine.
According to both sides, peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine turn out to be very difficult. Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba Kuleba, said: “The negotiation process is very difficult.” Moscow accused Kyiv of deliberately dragging out negotiations to end the war. “They are taking their time, they believe that time is on their side,” Russian delegation leader Vladimir Medinski said Friday, according to the TASS news agency.
The Ukrainian side does not work independently, argued Miediński. “Therefore, the current state of affairs is not optimistic.” Moscow accuses Kyiv of acting on Washington’s orders. “There is no movement in the basic positions that the Russian side insists on,” said an advisor to President Vladimir Putin.
Russia wants to sign a comprehensive treaty that takes into account Moscow’s “vital” demands. These included the neutral status of Ukraine, the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of the country, and the recognition of the annexed Black Sea peninsula in Crimea as the Russian and East Ukrainian separatist areas of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states.
Kuleba said no agreement was reached on the four points raised by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to Russian news agencies, Miediński also said: “On secondary issues, the positions are consistent. But we are not making progress on the main political issues. ” Erdogan said earlier that Russia and Ukraine could agree on four of the six main issues discussed in their talks.