Destroyed buildings in Mariupol
No truce for Orthodox Easter.
(Photo: action press)
Berlin With air strikes against the port city of Odessa, the Russian army sustained its new war objective announced earlier over the weekend: according to Russian Major General Rustam Minnekayev’s announcement, after the Donbass in eastern Ukraine, a bridge land along the Black Sea coast to Transnistria must also be conquered. This would cut Ukraine off from any access to the sea. Minnekayev, commander of Russia’s central military district, justified the plan by saying that the Russian-speaking population in the breakaway Transnistrian subarea of the Republic of Moldova was being oppressed.
In Odessa, the largest city in southern Ukraine and just 40 kilometers from the Dniester Republic occupied by Russian troops, Russian rockets hit residential buildings on Saturday. Eight people died, including a three-month-old baby, and 18 were injured, some seriously.
“The territory on which Russia must protect the rights of the Russian-speaking people is Russia itself,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message Sunday morning about Russia’s war aims, which have now been publicly expressed. for the first time. Russia is a country without freedom of expression and free elections, “a country where poverty thrives and human life is worthless,” Zelenskiy emphasized in Kiev, where he held a press conference at a central metro station on Saturday night. During the Russian bombing, thousands flee to underground subway stations.
The government of the Republic of Moldova, which like Ukraine is fighting for EU membership, also responded to the threat from Moscow. The Foreign Ministry in the capital, Chisinau, summoned the Russian ambassador there to express “deep concern” at the statements made by Moscow’s top military commander. The accusation that the Russian-speaking population is being oppressed in Moldova is unfounded, the Foreign Ministry said on its website. Moldova’s neutrality “must be respected by all international actors, including the Russian Federation”.
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In 1990, a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Dniester Republic seceded from the former Soviet Republic of Moldova, which had become independent, in a five-month war. A ceasefire was agreed in 1992, and since then Russia has mobilized more than 1,000 soldiers, who are declared “peacekeepers”, who previously supported the separatists. Russia has not yet recognized the region of 450,000 people in eastern Romanian-speaking Moldova as a state.
Western intelligence services are now assuming that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to implement his “Novorossiya” (New Russia) project – an expanded Russia to include eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as Transnistria and the two territories of South Ossetia. and from Abkhazia. Georgia. Influential Russian nationalist and neo-fascist circles around the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev have been campaigning for this “Novorossiya” in Moscow for years.
US ministers expected in Kiev
To move forward with this bill, an “independence” referendum is due to be held on Wednesday in the Black Sea port city of Cherson, which has been occupied since early March. Similar to the 2014/15 detachment of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, coordinated by the Russian army and secret services, Cherson, located 100 kilometers northwest of the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, also proclaims itself an independent people’s republic. This was the result of Ukrainian intelligence findings, citing Ukrainian city officials who were deposed by Russian occupation forces in Cherson. But the EU ambassador in Kiev, Estonian diplomat Matti Maasikas, also warned of this.
Zelensky again called for a face-to-face meeting with Putin to seek a diplomatic solution to ending the war. In the event of a Moscow-orchestrated referendum or the murder of the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians still hiding in the besieged port of Mariupol, there would be “no more negotiations”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and US Secretary of Defense Llyod Austin
Both ministers will discuss arms deliveries with the Ukrainian government in Kiev on Sunday night.
(Photo: Reuters)
Also in Mariupol and other cities in the Donbass, the Russian army continued to attack Orthodox Easter, which is celebrated in both countries. Kremlin chief Putin did not respond to Zelensky’s call for an Easter ceasefire. According to information from both sides, the localities there were shot at on Sunday morning. While Russia claimed to have attacked military positions, videos from residents showed apartment buildings destroyed. According to British secret service findings, the Russian army did not make significant gains in land.
In the evening, Selenski expected US Ministers Antony Blinken (outside) and Lloyd Austin (defense) to visit Kiev. It must be about new deliveries of heavy weapons from the US to be able to recapture Russian-occupied areas. Austin has already invited defense ministers and high-ranking military officials from allied states to a “Ukraine Security Advisory Group” at the US air force base in Ramstein, Palatinate, for Tuesday. Military aid to Ukraine must be more closely coordinated in that country.
More: Dispute over arms deliveries in the Bundestag