New satellite images from Maxar Technologies show a long Russian military convoy en route to Donbass in eastern Ukraine. The column was about 13 kilometers long, as seen in photos taken earlier on Friday. The footage brought back memories of the much longer convoy that moved to Kiev at the start of the war, but was stopped due to Ukrainian attacks and technical failures and eventually disbanded.
Military experts predict that Russian troops could launch a full-scale offensive in eastern Ukraine in the coming days. The Ukrainian General Staff announced that Russian soldiers on Sunday visited the second largest city Kharkov fired at and reinforcements after Izyum would have sent. From there, they could try to reach Sloviansk further to the southeast, experts at the US think tank Institute for the Study of War said.
A photo of the train on its way to Donbass
Source: AP
Also dnipro southern Kharkiv was hit by rockets on Sunday, according to the local governor. Russian troops attacked Dnipro airport again and completely destroyed it, according to Ukrainian sources. Both the airport and the surrounding infrastructure are in ruins, the responsible governor explained on Telegram. It is currently being checked for fatalities.
Ukraine’s War Territories
Source: WORLD Infographic
“A new attack on Dnipro airport,” said Valentin Resnichenko. “There’s nothing left.” According to reports, the attacks initially continued: “Rockets fly and fly,” the governor wrote on Telegram.
Dnipro is an industrial city with around one million inhabitants. It lies on the river of the same name (German: Dnepr), which forms an important natural barrier to eastern Ukraine, which is partially controlled by pro-Russian forces.
So far, 1,222 bodies have been recovered near Kiev.
In the region around the Ukrainian capital Kiev According to Ukrainian information on Sunday, more than 1,200 people were found dead. In an interview with British broadcaster Sky News, prosecutor Iryna Venediktova called the figure of 1,222 recovered dead “in the Kiev region alone”. Russian troops withdrew from the region in recent days.
Rescue workers retrieve buried bodies from an apartment block in Borodyanka
Source: Getty Images/Alexey Furman
Women wait in front of a soup kitchen in Butscha
Source: AP/Rodrigo Abd
Indeed, according to British intelligence, there is already evidence that non-combatants were disproportionately targeted. There are mass graves, hostages have been used as human shields and civilian infrastructure has been undermined, the British Defense Ministry said on Twitter late on Sunday.
Russian forces continued to use IEDs to inflict casualties in Ukraine, dampen morale and limit Ukrainian movement. In addition, troops continued to attack infrastructure targets where the risk of harming the civilian population was high – such as the recent bombing of a nitric acid storage facility near Rubishne in the Donbass.
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Putin changes general
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has apparently changed command of the war of aggression against Ukraine. US broadcaster CNN cites two unnamed sources in the US and Europe, according to which General Alexander Dvornikov was named supreme commander of the campaign against Ukraine. So far, there has apparently been no unified high command for what the Russians call a “special operation”.
The reorganization was a reaction to the failed capture of Kiev. “This speaks to the Russian admission that things are going extremely badly and they need to do something different,” one of the sources told CNN. The report has yet to be confirmed or commented on by the Russian side.
Dvornikov was most recently a commander in Russia’s southern military district. From September 2015 to June 2016, however, he led the deployment of Russian troops into Syria to support their dictator Bashar al-Assad. In 2016, President Putin awarded him the title of “Hero of the Russian Federation” for his work there.
General Alexander Dwornikov in the territory of Krasnodar, which belongs to his former command area, the southern military district of Russia
Source: pa/Vitaly Timkiv/TASS/dpa
The relentless siege and bombing of Aleppo, which caused heavy casualties among the civilian population, took place during the time of Dvornikov’s command in Syria. In December 2016, the city was taken over by Syrian government forces.
Military analysts and US officials familiar with intelligence believe that Dvornikov should achieve successes by May 9, the anniversary of Germany’s surrender to the Soviet Union in 1945. This anniversary is always celebrated with grand parades in Moscow.
Former British ambassador to Russia Sir Roderic Lyne told Sky News on Saturday that Moscow had appointed a new general with “a pretty wild track record in Syria to try to conquer at least some territory in Donetsk that Putin presents as a victory”.
Based on Dwornikov’s story, one would expect there to be more atrocities like at Bucha and Borodjanka, or like the attack on a train station in Kramatorsk, in Western circles. The brutal action in Mariupol can also serve as a model.
Selenskyj wants to continue negotiations
Despite the atrocities and attacks on the civilian population, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to continue talking to Russia about a peace solution. “No one wants to deal with a person or people who tortured their nation. It’s all understandable,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with the AP news agency on Saturday. “But we don’t want to miss opportunities for a diplomatic solution when we have them.”
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He was confident that the Ukrainians would eventually accept a possible peace deal, despite everything they had had to endure since the invasion of Russian troops. At the same time, he must realistically face the fact that the chances of a quick deal are slim, Zelenskyj said.
Source: WELT/Isabell Bischoff infographic
After more than six weeks of war, Selenskyj was exhausted during the interview. However, he was determined to continue defying Russia. “We have to fight, fight for our lives,” he said. “You can’t fight for dust when there’s nothing and no one.” He spoke to the AP inside the presidential palace in Kiev. Sandbags were piled in the windows and hallways. Heavily armed soldiers stood guard.
When asked whether Western states had already provided enough weapons and other equipment for Ukraine to gain the upper hand against Russia, Zelenskyy was visibly disappointed. “Not yet,” he said in English for emphasis. “Of course it’s not enough.” At the same time, he acknowledged growing support from Europe and the United States.