According to satellite images, the Russian army mobilized a 5-kilometer column of trucks and tanks that was 60 kilometers from Kiev until it reached the gates of the Ukrainian capital. Although the strategy of the Russian government is not yet clear, it is presumed that it could intensify the siege on the city in order to cause a shortage of food and basic necessities.
However, the troop mobilization could also signal a larger-scale attack that is still being coordinated by the Russian military’s top brass. In principle, different versions indicated that the position of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was to implement a blitzkrieg, the blitzkrieg tactic applied by the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II.
Since the beginning of the invasion, the government of the Russian Federation mobilized at least 50% of the troops that he had planned to mobilize.
Parallel to this Monday’s outpost, at least 11 civilians died during Russian bombardments on residential neighborhoods in Kharkov, near the Russian border, while Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, resisted some early-morning occupation attempts, and in the morning raised the curfew.
“Russian enemy shells residential neighborhoods” of Kharkov, wrote regional governor Oleg Sinegubov on social networks, in which he said: “Because of the bombings, which continue to take place, we cannot use the rescue services”. He explained that “currently there are 11 dead and dozens of wounded,” a situation he considered “a war crime.”
In addition, Russian planes bombed the city of Brovary, near Kiev, shortly after the first round of bilateral peace talks on the Belarusian border ended.
The death of civilians deepened the discussion about the attack by Russia to residential neighborhoods, although Moscow insists in its speech that it only has military objectives.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, stated in his daily appearance before the media that the Russian military “does everything possible” to “guarantee the safety of civilians” and denounced that there are “Ukrainian nationalist groups that use the civilian population as a human shield.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, affirmed today that since the beginning of the invasion, 102 civilians have been killed, including seven children, and warned that the real figures on the ground may be “considerably” higher.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian authorities claimed that the Russians tried several times during the night an assault on the capital, Kiev, where the curfew was lifted this morning, as planned.
That is why long queues formed outside the supermarkets, while brigades of volunteers with yellow and blue ties – the national colors – erected makeshift barricades.
Many of the city’s residents spent the weekend holed up underground in basements, bomb shelters and subway stations turned into bunkers.
Ukraine noted that Russian troops “slowed down the pace of the offensive” military and denounced attacks against civilian buildings in the cities of Zhytomyr and Chernigov.
On the other hand, Russia claimed its “air supremacy” throughout Ukraine, assured that it controls the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine and pointed out that it occupies Berdyansk, a port city located in the south-east, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, in the Zaporizhia province.
Throughout the morning there were bloody battles around the Mariupol port, according to the head of the Donetsk regional administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, in front of television microphones.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported that its forces had attacked 1,146 military targets since the start of the invasion, including 31 command and communication posts, 81 S-300, Buk M-1 and Osa anti-aircraft batteries, and 75 radar stations.according to Konashenkov, quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax.
However, the Ukrainian Interior Minister, Denis Monastirsky, affirmed that the situation, five days after the entry of foreign troops, is “serious but stable”.
“Every day the enemy sends more and more forces, but our glorious armed forces are simply destroying everything that reaches Kiev, which remains the main place of attack,” he told CNN.
A few kilometers away, the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators had a first contact, at the Alexandrovka-Vilcha checkpoint, on the border between Belarus and Ukraine, to put on the table the claims of each party, in a meeting in which, in addition to some minimal advances, all took the commitment of “a second round”, this time on the border between Belarus and Poland.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinski, said that “some points on which it is possible to find common ground” had been identified, and the head of the Ukrainian presidential office Mikhail Podoliak stressed that “a series of priority issues on which Certain decisions have been outlined”.
Putin’s demand to stop the invasion
For its part, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday demanded from his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, the recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and the demilitarization of Ukraine as conditions for ending the war in that country.
The Russian president stressed that the resolution of the conflict “was possible only if the legitimate security interests of Russia were taken into account without condition,” according to the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, the governments of Croatia, Luxembourg, Italy and the United Kingdom today committed to sending weapons to Ukraine, as well as Finland, which will also provide military aid to the former Soviet republic and thus break with its “historical” position of neutrality.
Japan and Switzerland, another traditionally neutral nation, joined the sanctions, and the UK tightened its restrictions by imposing measures against other Russian economic and financial bodies and barring Russian-flagged vessels from British ports.
Canada did the same, announcing today that the financial institutions of the North American country are prohibited from carrying out transactions with the Central Bank of Russia.
the treasure of the The United States, meanwhile, prohibited the transactions of Americans with the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.
And President Volodimir Zelenski called on the EU to accelerate the country’s entry into the bloc, a point on which there does not seem to be total agreement.
In an attempt to replicate Russia announced that it will restrict the flights of airlines from 36 countriesin response to the closure of the airspace of many States to their aircraft.
Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov himself was among the first to suffer the consequences of this penalty: he had to cancel the trip he planned to make tomorrow to the Swiss city of Geneva to participate in a UN meeting precisely because he had no way of getting there.
The question of assistance was also the subject of a talk by the President of the United States, Joe Biden, with the main leaders of the countries of the Organization of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), who agreed to adopt “additional measures to guarantee the security and defense” of their territories and renewed the call on Russia to “immediately stop the war, withdraw all its forces from Ukraine and return to the path of dialogue”.
The UN General Assembly was another diplomatic arena in which the situation was discussed: it opened with a minute of silence at the initiative of its president, Abdulla Shahid, in memory of the victims of the invasion, the “special emergency session ” He plans to discuss until tomorrow – or perhaps until Wednesday – a statement condemning Moscow.
Although there had already been sanctions in sports matters for Russia – the transfer of Moscow to other venues for key UEFA matches and the removal of the Formula 1 date – today the country received perhaps one of the toughest decisions: FIFA suspended the country until further notice in all international competition at the national team and soccer club level, which determines its elimination from the next Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Source: Ambito
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