Ukraine: The Russians regroup to attack Donbass

LAST UPDATE: 13:29

The adviser to the Ukrainian president, Sergei Nikiforov, told the BBC today that Russian troops had left the Kiev region, adding that Moscow was withdrawing its forces from Belarus and preparing for a new offensive in eastern Ukraine.

“They are withdrawing from the north. They are concentrating their efforts on hitting the east, to encircle our army in Donbas,” he said.

At the same time, Russian forces are holding 11 Ukrainian mayors captive and killing a detained mayor, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Sunday.

In a message posted on social media, Verestsuk said 11 local mayors from the Kiev, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Donetsk regions were “in Russian captivity,” CNN reported.

He added that Ukraine “will inform the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations and other organizations about their capture.”

Vereshchuk said the Ukrainian government had learned on Saturday that Olga Sukhenko, the mayor of Motyzhyn, a village in the Kiev region, had been killed in captivity by Russian forces.

Zelensky: O.Russian forces aim to occupy the eastern and southern parts of the country

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces were aiming to occupy the eastern and southern parts of the country and expressed dissatisfaction that Western states had not provided Kyiv with a sufficient number of missile systems.

In a videotaped speech late Saturday night, Zelensky also praised the forces defending Mariupol, saying their resistance allowed other cities to gain valuable time.

The head of the Ukrainian negotiators, David Arahamia, claimed tonight that Moscow had “orally” accepted Ukraine’s key positions and that Kyiv was now awaiting written confirmation.

It is recalled that speaking on a TV show, Arahamia hinted that the talks to reach a peace agreement have progressed significantly. “The Russian Federation has given an official response to all (Ukrainian) positions, that is, it has accepted them, except those on the Crimean issue,” which was annexed by Russia in 2014, the negotiator said. He added, however, that “there is no official written confirmation” other than “verbal” acceptance by Moscow.

According to Arahamias, if there is a direct meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian Vladimir Putin, he will most likely be hosted in Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “called us (yesterday Friday), as well as Vladimir Putin” saying that he would host such a meeting, he revealed. “We do not know when or where, but we believe that the place will probably be Ankara or Istanbul,” he added.

Since the beginning of the war, Zelensky has sought to speak directly with Putin.

Russia said today that peace talks had not progressed well enough for a meeting between the two countries’ leaders and that Moscow’s position on the Crimea and Donbass status remained unchanged, according to Reuters.

Rocket attack in Odessa

Rockets hit Odessa early this morning, the city council said in a post on the Internet.

One of the city’s “critical infrastructure facilities” was hit, regional administration spokesman Sergei Bratsuk told Ukrainian state radio and television.

“We hope there will be no casualties,” Bratsuk said.

An AFP reporter said the blasts struck around 6am and that at least three pillars of smoke and flames appeared to be rising from an industrial area.

A hotel worker in the city center said she heard an airplane, but a soldier near the site of one of the strikes claimed it was a rocket or a rocket.

Anton Gerastshenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, wrote in his Telegram account: “Odessa was attacked from the air. Fires broke out in some areas. Some of the missiles were fired by the air defense. It is recommended to close the windows.”

The Ukrainian refinery in Kremenchuk was completely destroyed after a Russian attack, Dmitry Lunin, the governor of the Poltava region, said on television today.

“The fire at the refinery has been extinguished, but the facility has been completely destroyed and can no longer operate,” Lunin said.

On the Russian side, the Ministry of Defense announced that rockets fired by the Russian armed forces destroyed today an oil refinery and three fuel storage facilities near Odessa.

According to the ministry, the facility was used by Ukraine to supply its troops near Mykolaiv.

The Ukrainian army announced that the explosions, which shook Odessa this morning, did not cause any casualties.

The bomber struck shortly after noon in front of a police recruiting center, Vladislav Nazarov.

“The Odessa region is a priority target of the enemy. The enemy continues its insidious practice of hitting sensitive installations,” Nazarov said, reiterating that any information on the location of the blows or the damage caused was prohibited.

Efforts to evacuate citizens in Mariupol continue today

Efforts to evacuate people with the help of the Red Cross from Mariupol will continue on Sunday with buses attempting to approach the besieged city, said Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Verestsuk.

“Seven buses will try to approach Mariupol, accompanied by the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Verestsuk said in a video posted online.

There will be 17 buses ready to evacuate people from Mariupol and Berdyansk, he said.

Reducing the intensity of Russian air and missile bombing

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces announced on Saturday that the intensity of Russian aircraft and missiles has decreased, adding that Moscow continues to withdraw its military units from northern Ukraine.

In a Facebook post, the general staff also said that the retreating Russian forces were placing mines on the streets and in some settlements.

The city of Busa near Kyiv was destroyed after the invasion of Russian forces

Some with eyes open to the gray sky. Others with their faces to the asphalt. All in civilian clothes. Everyone with their own attitude to death. Twenty bodies of men were lost on a street in Busa, correspondents of the French Agency and Reuters note.

The corpses, apparently of men, are scattered in several hundred meters, without it being possible to immediately determine the cause of their death, but one person has a large head injury.

“All these people were shot, killed, with a bullet in the back of the head,” Anatoly Fedoruk, the mayor of the city northwest of Kiev, told AFP, adding that Ukrainian troops were coming to retake the city from Russian forces. forces.

One of the men has his hands tied behind his back with a piece of white cloth, a Ukrainian passport lying on the floor next to him.

There are corpses all over the city, in front of the train station or on this or that side of the road.

Sixteen of the twenty corpses strewn on the sidewalk or on the edge of it. Three are in the middle of the street and another in the yard of a house. Another next to an abandoned car and two others lying next to bicycles – one with orange gloves and a black balaclava, lying sideways with his bicycle on him, as if he had fallen and could not get up.

The skin on their faces was waxy, indicating that the corpses had been there for at least several days.

The horror of war has become so common in Busa that the last inhabitants pass by the corpses without even looking at them.

In recent days, Russian forces have withdrawn from several locations near the capital after failing to encircle it. They are leaving the Kiev and Chernihiv regions of northern Ukraine with the aim of regrouping in the east.

Ukraine said the city had been “liberated” but had been devastated by the fighting: Agence France-Presse reporters saw shell holes in apartment buildings and damaged vehicles.

Depicting the intensity of the fighting, this street in the city is full of debris and damaged power lines. Supermarkets, cafes and houses on fire or damaged. The roof of a church has been damaged. Only one McDonald’s store seems to have survived. All the houses nearby look deserted.

A silver car full of bullet holes, another partially crushed, and a burning van near many corpses. “These are the consequences of the Russian occupation,” said the mayor.

Busa and the nearby city of Irpin have experienced some of the fiercest fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, when Russian troops tried to encircle Kyiv.

These two cities resisted, but the price was terribly high and most of the inhabitants escaped the relentless bombing and rocket attacks.

Ukrainian forces were able to fully penetrate the city a day or two ago, which was inaccessible for almost a month without any assistance.

They started their first deliveries of basic necessities yesterday Saturday, responding to the emergency, and the dead will remain unburied for a long time to come.

Ukrainian soldiers hand out food and medicine to residents from the back of a green military truck. A corpse is under a sheet, just a hundred meters away.

Residents of the city are “still very scared, still shocked,” said Yuri Biryukov, a member of Ukraine’s volunteer territorial defense team that oversees aid operations.

“Ordinary citizens can not even imagine the conditions they experienced that month, under artillery fire, without supplies, without a way out,” he added.

A resident showed the French Agency what he described as a grave, with a green wooden cross, in the back garden of a house, where four people were buried, including a child.

The people who stayed in the city are mostly elderly. A group of seniors is also concentrated in an outdoor kitchen, around a makeshift stove, next to a yellow Lada car with flat tires.

Russian soldiers say they raided the top-floor apartments of their Soviet-era building, stole items and asked an elderly woman if she had any weapons.

They added that they counted more than 70 Russian tanks moving out of the city on Tuesday leaving the city in the opposite direction from Kyiv. And the bombing stopped on Thursday.

“If peace prevails, everything will be fine,” 82-year-old Nadia Protopopova wants to believe.