While their high morale and the weapons sent by the West have so far enabled the Ukrainians to prevent the Russian army from entering their capital, Russia has warned the United States that it may attack new shipments of military equipment.
• Read also: [EN DIRECT] 17th day of war in Ukraine: here are all the latest developments
• Read also: War in Ukraine: in Odessa, “people expect the worst”
• Read also: Ukrainian soldier thanks the British for destroying a Russian tank
“Today, the morale of the troops is at its highest”, underlines the soldier “Topaz”, met by AFP while he was watching with his Kalashnikov the northern highway, at the exit of the eastern suburbs of Kyiv .
“The day before yesterday, we repelled the Russian tanks,” he smiles.
Photo AFP
This Ukrainian soldier in Irpin, north of Kyiv, poses with his missile launcher which he used to destroy the Russian tank behind him.
The onslaught of shells and rockets he speaks of forced a column of about 20 Russian vehicles, including several tanks, to turn back as it tried to approach Kyiv.
In Irpin, not far from the capital, a Ukrainian soldier thanked “his British comrades” after destroying a Russian tank with an anti-tank missile offered to Ukraine by the United Kingdom.
But Moscow appears to be fed up with Western weapons entering Ukraine, as a Russian diplomat claimed that convoys delivering Western weapons to Ukraine would now be considered “legitimate targets”, the report reported.Associated Press Saturday.
little movement
The Russians have advanced enough to raise fears of an imminent encirclement of Kyiv, where only the roads to the south remain clear. But the land front, around Kyiv in particular, hardly seems to be moving these days according to a number of military observers consulted by AFP.
The bombardments hardly ceased overnight in the port city of Mykolaiv, in the south of the country. They affected in particular a cancer center and an ophthalmological hospital, according to AFP.
President Volodymyr Zeleknsky said on Saturday that about 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had lost their lives since the start of the Russian invasion.
Explosions in Lviv
Several explosions were heard on Sunday morning in Lviv, the seventh largest city in the far west of the country, near the border with Poland, the Kyiv Independent reported on Saturday.
This city had so far been spared from attacks, so many Ukrainians from more dangerous regions had taken refuge there.
On Saturday, Ukrainian military intelligence said on Facebook that Russian soldiers had fired on civilians who were using an evacuation corridor near Kyiv the day before, killing seven people, including a child.
In Mariupol, where civilian prisoners in the city lack everything to survive, another attempt at an evacuation corridor was planned for Saturday to allow civilians to leave the city towards Zaporozhye, some 200 km to the northwest. . A humanitarian aid convoy en route to the city was stuck at a Russian checkpoint for more than five hours on Saturday, hoping it could reach its destination on Sunday.
Mariupol is still surrounded, which they cannot have by war, (the Russians) want to have by hunger and despair. As they cannot bring down the Ukrainian army, they are targeting the population,” analyzes a French military source.
bogus referendum
Also in the south, the Russians would like to stage a bogus referendum to create an independent republic in the city of Kherson, several Ukrainian officials accused on Saturday. Kherson is the first major city to be conquered by the Russians since the beginning of the invasion.
– With Olivier Faucher
