The War of Wladimir Putin kills, destroys and taunts the enemy. There is no gun honor because the victims are mostly civilians. Shot in the head, hands tied behind the back, thrown into mass graves and decorated with a medal for the shooter. The latest insult to the Russian President is the recognition of the ward stationed there Bucha, charged with war crimes, investigated by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova: the 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade was awarded the title of “Guard”. A clearly provocative decision, motivated by the Kremlin for “the mass heroism, courage and strength shown by the military in military operations in defense of the fatherland and the interests of the state”. Operations involving rocket launches at cities. Now the Russians are moving east, the attack “has begun and it’s hell,” says Lugansk governor Sergiy Gaidai of the socalled phase 2 of the Russian offensive.
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THE ROCKETS
The air alert was declared in almost all regions of the country. Yesterday the target was Lviv, at least seven dead and eleven injured, including a threeyearold child. «Artem fled Kharkiv with his mother says the mayor Andriy Sadovyi The youngest victim is thirty years old. What we see today is genocide, it is a deliberate action to kill peaceful people. We mourn the first deaths in our city, but we must be as vigilant as possible.” The antiaircraft alarm went off for 45 minutes, “the Russians fired four rockets, three of them hit warehouses and one hit a garage,” said the region’s governor Maksym Kozytsky. “It looked like an earthquake, the doors of the house shook, although we live ten kilometers from the explosion,” say local residents. «We are afraid, we have inner emptiness. Because we? We don’t understand what all this is for,” Myroslava despairs. The Russian attacks also hit the train station near the city, which, as Father Taras Zheplinskyi explains, “is a sensitive point in this part of Ukraine: this is where refugees coming from the North and East to Europe arrive”. A hub that the Russians, like many other infrastructures, see primarily as a strategic target to block the flow of arms into Ukraine from the West.
GO ON THE OFFENSIVE
Beyond the rocket attacks on the capital and the West, the focus of the war has shifted to the Eastern Front. In the Lugansk region, Kreminna was captured: “They shot people, four people died, and now they are in control of the city. Impossible to evacuate civilians, ”proclaims Sergiy Gaidai on Telegram. Two rockets fell on Dnipro, causing injuries, others hit Synelnykiv and Pavlograd districts. “We can now say that Russian troops have started the battle for Donbass, for which they have been preparing for some time. A large part of the Russian army is now devoted to this offensive,” noted Volodymyr Zelensky, who is pleading with the West for weapons and defining any delay in delivery as “permission for Russia to kill.” Pentagon sources report that the invading army is moving “heavy artillery and aircraft” to the east, and Kremlin Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Oleksandr Motuzyanyk confirms: “Russian forces have completed grouping troops in view of the offensive”.
Lugansk authorities urged residents to evacuate the southeastern region immediately: “Next week could be difficult. This may be the last time we have a chance to save you,” Gaidai warns. Meanwhile, the invaders are not loosening their grip on Mariupol. “The fight goes on. The enemy is storming the port,” reads the daily report of the Ukrainian General Staff. The siege is increasingly tightened, with pounding bombardments on Azovstal’s steelworks and underground bunkers, where authorities report the presence of at least a thousand civilians. Mariupol is starving but tries to resist. “We still own 20 percent of the city,” is the grim statement from the deputy mayor. And the Azov battalion publishes a video of the fighting on social networks: «The defense of Mariupol continues. Despite the overwhelming forces of the enemy, the fighters of the Azov regiment are fighting back ».
DISAPPEARING CHILDREN
The Russian approach to Mariupol, we read in the latest British intelligence report, is the same as that followed “in Chechnya in 1999 and in Syria in 2016: much of the infrastructure has been destroyed and there are many casualties among the residents”. Speaking for all is Marine Major Sergiy Volyna, who wrote a letter to Pope Francis to “save the weary population, the time has come when mere prayers are no longer enough.” And just from Crimea comes the alarm from a human rights group that Russian soldiers have forcibly removed 150 children from Mariupol, 100 of whom have been hospitalized and most taken away from their parents.
“They were moved by the army to occupied Donetsk and Russian Taganrog,” reports Olha Skrypnyk, head of the association. Petro Andriushchenko, adviser to the Mariupol Mayor, says that “some of the kidnapped children lost their parents in the bombings, but still have guardians in the unoccupied territories or are under state protection.” The orphans, on the other hand, were evacuated from Mariupol between February 24 and 25 together with the employees of the city institute.
The volunteers’ cry of alarm is joined by accusations from President Zelenskyy, who says that since the invasion began, 5,000 children have been “deported” to Russia from the Mariupol region. «They didn’t allow them to go to the free zones of Ukraine: where are these children? Nobody knows,” he muses. The Russian military is only bringing havoc, says Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk. “One in five residents was killed during the occupation. Personally, like thousands of my fellow citizens, I hate those who tortured and killed the peaceful inhabitants of this place ».
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