Kyiv Reuters) – Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region on Saturday but managed to capture three target areas, Ukraine’s military said, as Moscow pledged western sanctions against Russia Arms deliveries to Ukraine they prevented peace negotiations.
The Russians tried to capture the Lyman oblasts in Donetsk and Sievierodonetsk and Popasna in Lugansk, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a daily update. “Unsuccessfully, the fight goes on,” he said.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey LavrovIn a note released Saturday morning, said the lifting of Western sanctions on Russia is part of peace talks, which he says are difficult but are continuing daily via video link.
the ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has insisted since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24 that sanctions must be tightened and cannot be part of the negotiations. He said Friday there was a high risk the talks would end because of what he called Russia’s “playbook for killing people.”
Ukraine blames Russian soldiers Atrocities in areas near the capital Kyiv that they had previously occupied. Moscow denies the claims.
Lavrov said if the United States and other NATO countries are really interested in solving the Ukraine crisis, they should stop sending arms to Kyiv.
In Washington, the $33 billion aid package Proposal of the US President Joe Biden for Ukraine, including $20 billion for arms, has received bipartisan approval.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she hopes Congress will pass the package as soon as possible.
“IT CANNOT PASS”
Russia is calling its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm its neighbor and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist charge is unfounded and that the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
The war has reduced cities to rubble, killing thousands and forcing 5 million Ukrainians to flee abroad. Having failed to capture the capital, Russia is now concentrating on eastern and southern Ukraine.
Moscow hopes to take full control of the eastern Donbass region, which consists of Luhansk and Donetsk, parts of which were already controlled by Russian-backed separatists before the invasion.
Moscow announced on Saturday that its artillery units hit 389 Ukrainian targets overnight. The governor of Russia’s Bryansk region said air defenses prevented a Ukrainian plane from entering the region and as a result the shelling hit parts of an oil terminal, Russian news agencies reported.
On the Ukrainian side the governor of Luhansk, Serhiy GaidaiHe said the Russians were shelling the entire region “but they can’t penetrate our defenses.” He explained that despite the difficult situation, civilians continued to be evacuated.
Gaidai said two schools and 20 houses were destroyed by Russian strikes on Friday in the Lugansk towns of Rubizhne and Popasna.
Mykola Khanatov, head of the military administration in Popasna, said Russian soldiers fired on two buses on Friday that were being sent to evacuate civilians from the city, and that nothing was heard from the drivers. He did not say how many people were on the buses.
There were also reports of attacks from locations outside Donbass, including the southern regions of Dnipro and Zaporizhia and the northeastern city of Kharkov, where the regional governor said a residential area was shelled overnight.
The British Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that Russia had been forced to combine and redeploy disparate and exhausted units due to failed advances in north-eastern Ukraine.
Reuters was unable to independently verify reports of what happened at the scene.
GRAIN, FUEL
Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Ukraine, Taras Vysotskyaccused the Russian military of stealing hundreds of thousands of tons of grain from the territories they occupied and said he feared another 1.5 million tons could be stolen.
Ukraine said Thursday that Russian grain theft from its territory is adding to threats to global food security with disruptions to spring planting and lockdowns on Ukrainian ports. The Kremlin said it had no information about it.
According to the International Grains Council, Ukraine was the fourth largest grain exporter in the world in the 2020/21 season, selling 44.7 million tons abroad. Export volume has dropped drastically since the invasion.
Zelenskyy said in his evening speech on Friday that the fuel shortage in Ukraine will end soon, despite the fact that the Russian military damaged several oil depots. the economy minister, Julia Svyrydenkosaid that Ukrainian operators had received contracts with European suppliers.
(Additional reporting by Reuters journalists, written by Estelle Shirbon, edited in Spanish by Manuel Farías)