One person was killed and five were injured “as a result of enemy artillery and mortar attacks,” the Kharkov regional military administration said on Telegram.
“The situation in the Kharkov region is tough, but our armed forces, our intelligence, have had significant tactical successes,” Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said in his latest television message, the AFP news agency reported. .
Ukrainian forces say they have captured Ruska Lozova, a “strategically important” town near Kharkov, and evacuated hundreds of civilians.
According to a senior NATO official, Russia it has only had “minor” and “irregular” advances, due to the counterattack of the Ukrainian forces armed by Western countries.
The Pentagon said that the Russians “have fallen behind what they hoped to achieve in Donbass” because airstrikes have failed to pave ground advances in that area, which pro-Russian separatists have already partially dominated since 2014 and which has become Moscow’s main objective in this phase of the war.
The Russian Foreign Minister assured, however, in an interview with the official Chinese agency Xinhua, that his country’s offensive “is being carried out in strict accordance with the plan.”
Lavrov demanded in that interview that Western countries stop sending weapons and warned that, with their sanctions on Moscow, the United States and allied countries are willing to endanger the world’s energy and food security.
“In the interest of satisfying their geopolitical ambitions, Western states are willing to jeopardize the energy and food security of entire regions of the world,” he stressed.
Lavrov denounced that the West “tries to crush with the crudest methods those nations that carry out an independent domestic and foreign policy.”
“And not only Russia. We see how they impose bloc thinking in the Asia-Pacific region (…) In the style of the archaic Monroe Doctrine, the United States tries to dictate to Latin America what standards to follow (… ) The constant pressure on Belarus is framed along the same lines. The list is long,” he remarked.
“If the United States and NATO are really interested in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, the first thing they should do is wake up and stop sending weapons and ammunition to the kyiv regime,” the Russian chief diplomat added, according to AFP and Sputnik agencies.
Some 40 countries met in Germany on Tuesday to coordinate an acceleration of supplies of military equipment claimed by kyiv.
The United States, France, the Czech Republic and other allies have provided Ukraine with long-range weapons to help it deal with Moscow’s offensive in its eastern territory.
Zelensky held a telephone conversation today with Emmanuel Macron, whom he thanked for “the large-scale shipments of military material that contribute to the Ukrainian resistance”, while the French head of state “indicated that this support will be strengthened, as will the aid aid provided by France,” according to a French government statement.
The French president also spoke of “France’s availability to contribute to an agreement that offers security guarantees to Ukraine”, one of the essential conditions requested by kyiv to resume high-level peace talks with Moscow.
“The mission of the French experts who contribute to the collection of evidence to fight against impunity and allow the work of international justice in relation to the crimes committed in the context of Russian aggression will continue,” the text, reproduced by AFP, added. .
Several countries offered experts to Ukraine to collaborate with the investigation of alleged war crimes.
Ukrainian authorities accuse Russian troops of deliberately massacring civilians in Bucha, Borodianka and other kyiv suburbs during their occupation in March, before withdrawing, while Moscow denies responsibility for these massacres, calling it a “montage” to frame his troops.
The bodies of three men with their hands tied and blindfolded and signs of having been tortured and shot were found today in a grave near the Ukrainian town of Bucha, the kyiv police reported.
“The victims were tortured for a long time… In the end, each one was shot in the temple,” kyiv police chief Andriy Nebitov said in a statement, adding that their hands were tied, eyes and some put gags on their mouths.
The bodies of these three men were found in Mirotske, a town near Bucha, the town on the outskirts of kyiv that became a symbol of the atrocities of the war in Ukraine and where many dead civilians were found.
In mid-February, the large-scale evacuation of the civilian population from the Donbass region, where Donetsk and Luhansk are located, began.
In Popasna, Lugansk region under Ukrainian control, Russian troops opened fire on two evacuation buses and communication with the drivers was lost, the head of the Municipal Civil-Military Administration of Popasna, Mikola Janatov, reported through Telegram, reported the Ukrainian agency Ukrinform.
The Ukrainian Army claimed on Facebook to have destroyed 11 Russian tanks and more than 40 units of other equipment in the last 24 hours.
On February 24, Russia launched a military offensive in Ukraine under the justification that the kyiv government had been committing crimes against the inhabitants of the two Russian-speaking provinces in the Donbass region, which Moscow had previously recognized as independent states.
The Kremlin’s claim includes the violation by Ukraine of the Minsk Peace Agreements of 2014 and 2015, which forced kyiv to give those two provinces -Lugansk and Donetsk, which in separate referendums voted to separate from Ukraine- autonomy and possibilities to choose their own regional authorities.
Ukraine, on the other hand, affirms that with the military operation Russia intends to destroy Ukrainian culture and history, and to overthrow President Zelensky to promote a leader close to Moscow to come to power.
Source: Ambito
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