Today, Sunday, the Russian military operation in Ukraine entered its 25th day, as the Russian army continues to destroy Ukrainian military targets, while the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine revealed that Ukraine will receive a new shipment of US weapons Within days, it would include Javelin and Stinger missiles.
This comes as Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath sources in Ukraine reported that most of the markets are closed in Kharkiv, where the city is still witnessing bombings.
The sources also revealed that Russian forces are deployed in the city and are digging trenches there.
For his part, the Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Army raised the possibility of an attack by Belarusian forces on his country, which the Ukrainian presidency also warned of.
Later, an adviser to the Ukrainian president said that “Russia does not have enough forces to advance further,” noting that “the battles on the front lines with Russia are partially frozen.”
Ukrainian officials announced that one of the largest European steel plants in Mariupol had been damaged, while the city council announced that thousands of people had been deported from Mariupol to Russia, last week.
The Mariupol city council also announced that Russian forces had bombed an art school in the besieged coastal city, where about 400 residents had sought refuge. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the attack, which occurred on Saturday, although the council said the building had been destroyed, and that there were victims under the rubble.
The Russian authorities said that about 11,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the Crimea during the past 4 days, while the Russian Defense Ministry announced the destruction of 62 Ukrainian military facilities within one day, adding that the air defenses downed a helicopter and 6 Ukrainian drones.
She added, “We have shot down 207 drones and destroyed 1,467 Ukrainian tanks since the start of the military operation.” It also confirmed the killing of 100 Ukrainian forces and mercenaries in the bombing of a training center in Zhytomyr.
The Russian Defense Ministry had said that its forces had penetrated the defenses of the Ukrainian “Aidar” battalion, killing 30 of its members. And before that, the Russian army announced Destruction of military installations and warehouses And Ukrainian air defense systems using modern and accurate missiles.
This comes as Kyiv has admitted that it has lost access to the Sea of Azov.
At the same time, Russia warned, yesterday, Saturday, of the danger of drifting mines planted by Ukrainian forces in the Black Sea after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, stressing that it does not rule out reaching the Bosphorus Strait or even the Mediterranean Sea, according to Agence France-Presse.
“After the start of the Russian special military operation, the Ukrainian naval forces set up minefields near the ports of Odessa, Ochakov, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny,” the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement, stressing that they were “obsolete mines of the first half of the twentieth century.”
The agency added that storms led to the beginning of breaks in the cables connecting the mines to their anchors. He warned that “the mines are drifting randomly in the western part of the Black Sea, driven by wind and current.”
Since the area is dominated by surface currents in the southern direction, “the drift of mines towards the Bosphorus Strait and then towards the waters of the Mediterranean basin is not excluded,” according to the Russian Federal Security Service.
The United Nations Human Rights Council said on Saturday that at least 847 civilians had been killed and 1,399 wounded in Ukraine as of March 18.
He added that most of the casualties were caused by the use of explosive weapons such as heavy artillery shells and multiple rocket launch systems, in addition to air strikes and missiles, according to the Archyde.com news agency.
At the same time, the Russian “TASS” news agency quoted the head of the National Center for Defense Management, Mikhail Mizintsev, as saying, on Saturday, that his country had opened ten humanitarian corridors in the cities of Kyiv, Mariupol, Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov in Ukraine.
Mizintsev added that the Ukrainian authorities had only agreed to three of the routes provided by Russia, noting that the Ukrainian side requested 11 other humanitarian corridors in Kyiv, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Kharkov.