Russia bombed a major weapons stockpile in Odessa and Ukraine confirmed at least eight dead in the attack. kyiv has threatened to close the dialogue with Moscow if it kills the Ukrainian soldiers who are barricaded in the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol. While the Ukrainian forces confirmed that they have regained control of three cities in the Kharkov region. This Sunday the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense of the United States will meet with the Ukrainian president Volodimir Zelenski in kyiv.
Odessa
The port of Odesa woke up with the terror of multiple bombings. the ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky assured that eight people died, including a three-month-old baby. For its part, The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the destruction of a stockpile of weapons in Odessa that were handed over by Ukraine’s Western allies. “The Russian Armed Forces today rendered inoperative with high-precision, long-range missiles a logistics terminal at a military airfield near Odessa where large quantities of foreign weapons supplied by the US and European countries were stored,” according to a statement from Russia. Moscow in which they also confirm having attacked 79 military targets on Ukrainian territory.
According to the Ukrainian air force, Russian militia fired missiles from Tu-95 bombers over the Caspian Sea. According to that report, two missiles hit a military installation, two in residential buildings, while Ukraine confirmed having destroyed two missiles with its anti-aircraft defense system. “The only objective of the Russian missile attacks against Odessa is terror”Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.
referendum and ultimatum
The Russian army resumed its attacks on a steel mill in the port of Mariupol. Zelensky’s office adviser, Oleksi Arestovich, confirmed the offensive on the Azovstal plant where some 1,000 people between civilians and Ukrainian troops are entrenched, including 500 wounded. In this way, Zelenski threatened to leave the peace negotiations if Russia kills the Ukrainian soldiers who are trapped in the metal works and if the Kremlin holds referendums in the Kherson region, currently under Russian occupation.
According to an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andriushchenko, this Saturday the Russian army foiled a new evacuation attempt. “We were going to evacuate about 200 residents but the Russian Army approached them and ordered them to disperse because there was going to be shelling,” he said.
“If our men are killed in Mariupol and if so-called referendums are organized in the Kherson region, Ukraine will withdraw from the entire negotiation process.”Zelensky said at a press conference at a subway station in the capital of the former Soviet republic. In turn, the president stressed that “this definitively prevents the end of the war through diplomatic channels” and considered it a wrong step on the part of Russia. “It shows that everything that has happened up to this point, all these sessions of the diplomatic groups, are a fiction and a political theater with very bad actors”assured. In Kherson, Russian forces seek to hold a referendum to create the Moscow-aligned Kherson People’s Republic and could be held on April 27.
Earlier, a high command of the Russian army had acknowledged plans to build a land corridor connecting Donbass with the Crimean peninsula, annexed to Russia in 2014. Major General Rustam Minnekaev, deputy commander of Russia’s Central Military District, admitted that this corridor is planned in the second phase of the so-called “special military operation”.
Ukrainian forces denounced that Russia carried out defensive operations in the east to gain full control in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions with large-scale attacks.. “All battle groups that have accumulated so far in Belarus, near our northern borders, have now moved to eastern Ukraine,” said the representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Vadym Skibitsky. .
Forced deportations to Russia
On the other hand, Ukraine confirmed that it regained control of three towns near Kharkov. “After long and fierce fighting, our troops dislodged the Russian troops from Bezruki, Slatine and Prudyanka,” declared the governor of the Kharkov region, Oleg Synegubov. The spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry stated that Kharkov remains partially blocked by Kremlin troops, which announced that it carried out 1,098 artillery and rocket attacks in the last day.
Ukrainian authorities also denounced the forced deportation of 308 people in the beleaguered port of Mariupol to Russia’s eastern region. “Russia has forcibly deported Ukrainian citizens from Mariupol to the Primorski region, 8,000 kilometers from her homeland,” Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Liudmila Denisova said on her Telegram channel. Denisova revealed that on April 21 a train arrived in the city of Nakhodka with more than 300 Ukrainians who came from Mariupol, including children, people with disabilities and students, and she published photographs of the arrival of these displaced people at the station.
On the other hand, this Sunday, two months after the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory, Zelensky will receive two senior officials from Washington; the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. The Ukrainian president stressed that the talks will be focused on the supply of weapons from the United States to Ukraine. This week US President Joe Biden announced a generous US$800 million military aid package. “In times of war we cannot refuse the most powerful military aid and it comes precisely from the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition, there are many European friends, but we understand the volumes of this aid,” Zelensky said. For its part, despite its proximity to the Kremlin, Turkey announced the closure of its airspace for all Russian flights to Syria.
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