“We’re looking for peace, I’m really looking for it. The other European leaders, especially the French and the Germans, are looking to I will also hold talks with Putin“These are the words of Prime Minister Mario Draghi at the press conference in Brussels after the EU Council: “We are not at war because we follow a war fate, we want peace first of all”, the Prime Minister repeats the position of Italy and the EU in reference to the ongoing war.The best way to show that you want peace is to cease hostilities and sit down at the table. If you don’t, it means you’re hoping to gain ground. Someday for sure” Putin “will come to a peace table, we hope he will arrive before the total destruction of Ukraine, before the Soviet Union invaded Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, “says the prime minister. “It is desirable that we sit down at the peace table before this happens. Efforts have not brought anything, but they are still necessary, the day that changes, we will be there to start the peace process together with the other allies.” “That’s the meaning of when I said that Putin doesn’t want peace: there is no peace, there hasn’t been a ceasefire demonstration yet. Even during the meetings with the Ukrainians, the fire did not stop, the bombings continued “, the Moscow offensive did not stop even during the various rounds of negotiations with Kyiv.
Meanwhile, the climate in the ranks of the Russian troops is deteriorating involved in the invasion of Ukraine. Today, a Russian commander would have been hit with a tank by one of his soldiers in anger at the high toll his unit had lost in the conflict in Ukraine. This was reported by the Ukrainian reporter Roman Tsymbaliuk. Images of Russian Colonel Yuri Medvedev, commander of the 37th Motorized Rifle Brigade, being transported to a hospital in Belarus with serious leg injuries, circulated on social media. The senior officer would die. Tsymbaliuk estimates his battalion has lost half of the approximately 1,500 killed and wounded so far.
negotiations blocked
The positions appear more and more rigid, the armed clash continues, killing civilians and soldiers on both sides. Moscow does not hide that the primary goal is to gain control of the entire Donbass region in the east of the country. And Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky admits: “We are not making any progress on important political issues”. Instead, positions are converging on secondary issues. And the Russians are also counting the dead: 1,351 soldiers have died so far in the invasion of Ukraine, and 3,825 have been injured, according to the Moscow Defense Ministry. Soldiers you give superiors to the hint comes that the war must end by May 9th with a parade in Moscow “Victory Day” in memory of the surrender of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Moscow attacks Biden
Moscow is raising the bar and after denying any hypothesis of a nuclear threat and the use of phosphorus bombs in Ukraine, Finger on US President Joe Biden’s son. The spokesman for the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov actually states that Hunter Biden could be”involved in leading biological weapons development laboratories in Ukraine“.” Of course he explains we will ask for explanations about his possible involvement. And not just us. China has already asked for clarification“. The name of Hunter Biden is currently on the list by American figures who are targets of Russian countersanctions. But Peskow also leaves it out at the head of the White House accuse him of wanting to divert attention from the chemical and biological program being carried out by the United States in Ukraine.
The discussions
At the international level, a meeting lasted almost three hours Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi In the end, the two declare that they want “an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.” A request that, as we learn, has already been made by the Chinese head of state Xi Jinping to the British prime minister Boris Johnson in a phone interview. The international community, Xi said, “should really promote peace and promote talks, create the conditions for a political solution to the problem and urge a speedy return to peace in Ukraine.” And mehe China stands ready to continue to play a constructive role in this sense”.
The sanctions
Indeed, Beijing emphatically declares itself to be against sanctions, even those who decided against North Korea after the super missile test could theoretically reach the states because certainly “they do not facilitate the dialogue“Sanctions that the US does not want to see in place for now, for China instead. “I don’t think sanctions on China are necessary or appropriate now,” says US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, responding to those who do ask her if She considers sanctions against Beijing as a “partner of Russia to be possible and necessary. A voice from the chorus rises from the European front: that of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban. Asked by the Kiev leader to be clear about what kind of relationship he would like to continue to have with Russia, Orban responds by calling the energy sanctions imposed by Western countries “unacceptable”. “85% of the gas and more than 60% of the oil in Hungary comes from Russia,” explains the Hungarian Prime Minister.
The bombs keep falling
Meanwhile, the war rages on and the UN denounces that there have been more than 1,035 civilian casualties since the conflict began.
About 300 dead are feared in the Russian attack on the Mariupol Theater from last March 16th. The mayor of the city announced this, citing witnesses. The head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, speaks of “mass graves in Mariupol, including one with 200 bodies.” During the night, Rubizhne, a town not far from Lugansk (east), was hit, killing two border guards. And two missiles would hit a military facility on the outskirts of Dnipro, the third largest city in Ukraine. While the Russian Orthodox Church states that “a Russian military chaplain” “killed in a Ukrainian missile attack in southwestern Russia near the border with Ukraine. Oleg Artyomov was in the village of Zhuravlyovka in Russia’s Belgorod region when he “was bombed by a Ukrainian Smerch rocket launcher and died. It would be the first fatality on Russian territory to be caused by the became Ukrainian fire, which has been made public since the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
The rape alert
the Meanwhile, the Ukrainian prosecutor Iryna Venediktova is sounding the alarm: “Russian armed forces use rape as a weapon of war“According to the magistrate, Russian soldiers allegedly raped a woman in a house near Kyiv, The Independent reports, in front of her son.” And Ukrainian prosecutors speak in an update shared by the Kyiv parliament on Twitter , also of it “135 children have died since the Russian invasion began“According to British intelligence, the Ukrainian army would then be able to ‘regain control of towns and defensive positions east of the capital Kyiv’. While Ukrainian soldiers “destroyed 12 Russian tanks and repelled 9 attacks in the last 24 hours,” the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Cyber Attack Warning
Meanwhile, in Italy, the director of the National Cybersecurity Agency, Roberto Baldoni starts the warning this “must be maximum because Russia “has not yet realized its full potential in the cyber sphere. While Check Point Research, the division of information security agency Check Point Software Technologies, in a statement denounced “the increase in online scams aimed at soliciting donations to Ukraine.”
The cuts by multinational companies
On the sanctions front, however Tiffany & Co proclaims that “does not buy new diamonds mined in Russia‘ while Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, entering the European summit today, calls for ‘more farreaching sanctions’ against Russia. According to Bloomberg the Russian refineries They would “minimize their activities, including Rosneft Tuapse,” which would “stop collecting crude shipments.” The Mariisky refinery was reportedly “closed because it cannot ship petroleum products by rail.” Of the “17 activities in the country, 9 are due to inactivity and 8 are due to maintenance”.
Putin’s anger
The Russian President compared Boycott of Russian cultural events and representatives of Russian culture in Western countries to the book fires for which the Nazis were responsible. “The last time said the Kremlin chief at a meeting with representatives of the cultural world it was the Nazis in Germany, about 90 years ago, who carried out such a campaign of destruction against unwanted culture. We remember well the pictures of the books burned in the squares”.