The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is on her way to Kyiv with the High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, to meet with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and to take stock of the upcoming initiatives in Brussels. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said the situation in Borodyanka, another town near Kyiv from which the Russians had withdrawn, was “much more dire” than in Bucha. And according to satellite images released by the New York Times, independent Russian media outlet Meduza released video captured by a drone showing civilians in Bucha being killed during Russian occupation of the Ukrainian city. The images, compared to the video taken on the ground after the Russian army left, show that the position of the bodies matches. Moscow has always denied responsibility for the massacre, calling it a “provocation” artfully fabricated by the Kiev authorities.
On military soil, however, American and British defense analysts agree that Russian forces have withdrawn from the Kyiv region because they have given up on capturing the Ukrainian capital. According to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “Putin thought he could take Ukraine very quickly and capture that capital very quickly. Armed forces have now completely withdrawn from Ukraine to Belarus and Russia” and “at least some of those forces are being moved to eastern Ukraine, to fight in the Donbass”. For a massive military deployment from the north, the Bulletin adds, it will take “at least a week.” In confirmation of these analyses, the head of the administration of the Sumy district in the northeast of the country, Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, said that the area was completely free of Russian troops, but in any case not safe as there are many mined and unexplored areas.
In eastern Ukraine, on the other hand, heavy bombing and rocket fire pounded Donbass throughout the night, BBC envoy Joe Inwood from the city of Slavyansk told the Lugansk governor, who feared an imminent Russian attack in the region, calling for all civilians to evacuate to safer regions, but movement is difficult due to the bombings that destroyed a section of the railway yesterday and caused huge queues at Kramtorsk station. Rail services would resume today. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announces that 10 humanitarian corridors have been agreed for today to evacuate civilians from the besieged cities. For Mariupol in particular isolated since the beginning of the invasion and where the humanitarian conditions have been described by the Red Cross as “apocalyptic” a corridor to Zaporizhia is planned, always with its own means.
Still anticipating a Moscow offensive in the southeast, the Pentagon is preparing to send more than 1,400 Stinger missiles, more than 5,000 antitank spears and hundreds of drones to Kyiv, among other things. And EU Council President Charles Michel expects the EU to propose increasing the fund for military support to Ukraine by a further 500 million to 1.5 billion euros. At the same time, Australia announced that it would send the 20 armored vehicles requested by President Zelensky himself to Kyiv. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the other hand, would await the final decision to supply Ukraine with highend tanks. According to qualified sources cited by Politico, a decision was initially planned for this week but is now on hold “because the Social Democratic Chancellor much to the frustration of his ruling coalition partners is arguing that Germany should first reach a common position with western allies in the matter before handing over such heavy military hardware.