Russia expanded its targets in Ukraine on Sunday with attacks on a military base near the Polish border, while Kiev said more than 2,100 civilians had already been killed in one of its besieged cities.
Overnight, Russian forces attacked the Yavoriv military base, some 40 kilometers northwest of Lviv, a destination for thousands of internally displaced people, and some 20 kilometers from the border with Poland, a NATO member.
In recent years, those facilities have hosted exercises with foreign instructors.
“Russia attacked the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security. Foreign instructors work there,” said Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.
The shelling, carried out from the Black and Azov seas, caused 35 deaths and 134 wounded, according to the region’s governor, Maxim Kozitsky.
“As a result of the attack, up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large number of foreign weapons were eliminated,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov replied.
‘Worst case scenario’ in Mariupol
In the south in Mariupol, a port city under siege for thirteen days, the besieged and bombed-out residents were still waiting for humanitarian aid to arrive.
The invaders “cynically and deliberately attack residential buildings, densely populated areas, destroy children’s hospitals and urban infrastructure (…). To date, 2,187 Mariupol residents have been killed in Russian attacks,” the city’s mayor said in a statement. Telegram this Sunday.
“In 24 hours we have seen 22 bombings in a peaceful city. Some 100 bombs have already been dropped on Mariupol,” he added.
Meanwhile, a convoy with aid was “two hours from Mariupol, 80 km,” Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said on Sunday.
Coming from Zaporizhia, the convoy was blocked at a Russian checkpoint for more than five hours on Saturday.
The arrival of aid is key, since in the city “human suffering is immense”, denounced the International Committee of the Red Cross, which warned of the “worst scenario”.
In a statement, the NGO stressed that the population is forced to take refuge in unheated anti-aircraft bunkers and risk their lives to search for food and water.
Mariupol “has become a martyr city in the heartbreaking war that is devastating Ukraine,” lamented Pope Francis, who called for an end to the “massacre.”
dead journalist
In Irpin, a northwestern suburb of Kiev where Ukrainian forces are fighting the Russian military, American journalist Brent Renaud, 50, was killed, and another reporter and a Ukrainian civilian were injured, he told the newspaper. AFP Danylo Shapovalov, doctor of the territorial defense of Ukraine.
Kiev, where only the roads to the south remain clear, is increasingly surrounded by Russian soldiers.
Present on the outskirts of the capital, they try to neutralize neighboring towns to “blockade” the capital, according to the Ukrainian General Staff. Its northwestern suburbs (Irpin, Bucha) have been heavily bombed in recent days.
According to Ukrainian soldiers interviewed by the AFP in Irpin, Bucha is already in the hands of Russian soldiers.
However, both west and east of the capital, Ukrainian resistance is fierce, journalists from the AFP.
In the south, Odessa continues to prepare for an offensive by Russian troops, which are currently concentrated in Mikolaiv, about 100 km to the east.
Nine people were killed in the shelling of the coastal city, said the region’s governor, Vitali Kim. On Saturday, the bombardments reached a cancer center and an eye clinic, confirmed a journalist from the AFP.
On the other hand, Russian forces kidnapped the mayor of Dniprorudné, Evguen Matveiev, two days after another mayor was kidnapped, said the governor of the Zaporizhia region, also in the south. The European Union condemned these kidnappings.
More than 2.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the war broke out, to which are added some two million internally displaced persons, according to figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
In the last 24 hours, nearly 100,000 people have fled the fighting, the UN said on Sunday.
Phosphorus bombs?
On Sunday, a Ukrainian police official in the eastern Luhansk region accused Moscow of bombing his town with phosphorus bombs.
“It’s what the Nazis called a ‘burning onion,’ that’s what the ‘Russians’ [combinación de “rusos” y “fascistas”] are releasing in our cities. Unspeakable suffering and fires,” Popasna Police Chief Oleksi Biloshytsky said on Facebook.
The information has not yet been verified.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the BBCPolish President Andrzej Duda warned of the danger of Moscow using chemical weapons in the invasion of Ukraine, which would “change the situation”.
On the same day, Leonid Slutski, a Russian negotiator who recently met with Ukrainian counterparts in Belarus, said talks between Kiev and Moscow were making progress.
“My personal expectation is that this progress will lead to a common position between the two delegations and the signing of documents very soon,” he said, quoted by Russian news agencies.
Meanwhile, thousands of people demonstrated in Germany on Sunday to call for peace, according to police. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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