From the besieged port city of Mariupol alone, thousands of people were taken to Russia or Russian-controlled areas, said US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael Carpenter, on Thursday in Vienna.
The Ukrainian government estimates the number of kidnapped Ukrainians at almost 1.2 million. According to the ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova, at least 200,000 children are among them. According to Kiev, Moscow also operates so-called filtration camps in which arrested Ukrainians are interrogated.
Eyewitnesses reported “brutal interrogations” in those camps, Carpenter said. This and the enforced deportations would amount to war crimes. “We must not allow this evil to happen,” he said. The UN Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to launch an investigation into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
Kyiv has accused the Russian army of having committed war crimes in numerous places since invading Ukraine on February 24. The broadcasters CNN and BBC published footage of such a possible crime in mid-March on Thursday. Surveillance footage showed Russian soldiers apparently shooting two unarmed civilians in the back near a car dealership outside of Kyiv. One of the men died on the spot, the other shortly afterwards.
Fighting in southern and eastern Ukraine continued on Thursday. The Presidential Office of Ukraine reported continued shelling from the Luhansk region. Russian troops are attempting to seize complete control of the city of Rubishne, blockade a key Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway and capture Severodonetsk, sources said.
According to information from the British Ministry of Defense on Friday morning, Ukrainian units prevented Russian troops from crossing the Seversky Donets River in the Donbass. This flows west of the city of Severodonetsk. Images showed that the Russian military had lost equipment used to form pontoon bridges, among other things, British military intelligence said. The Russian troops tried to break through in the direction of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Killed in attacks on Donetsk and Kharkiv
According to rescue workers, three people were killed and twelve others injured in an attack on a school in the north-eastern region of Chernihiv on Thursday. The Russian army itself reported attacks on Donetsk and Kharkiv with more than 170 dead.
According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Russian armed forces have now destroyed 570 health facilities across the country, including 101 hospitals. “What for? That’s nonsense. That’s barbarism,” said the Ukrainian head of state in his daily video message on Thursday.
Ukraine also held negotiations with Russia to evacuate seriously injured soldiers from the besieged Azovstal Steelworks in Mariupol. The talks are “very difficult,” said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereshchuk. It is initially only about 38 soldiers who could be exchanged for captured Russians. According to Ukrainian sources, more than a thousand fighters are holed up in the industrial complex. They are the last Ukrainian defenders in the strategically important port city of Mariupol, which is now completely under Russian control except for the industrial area. Hundreds of civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal facilities in recent weeks.
For Selenskyj, almost two and a half months after the invasion, Russia’s strategic defeat is “obvious”. Moscow’s defeat was “obvious to everyone in the world and also to those who still communicate with them (the Russians),” Zelenskyy continued in his daily video message. Only Russia does not have the courage to admit defeat.
Source: Nachrichten
