Denmark, Sweden summons Russian envoys for airspace intrusion
A Russian rocket attack destroyed an airport runway in Odesa, Ukraine’s third largest city and a major port in the Black Sea, on April 30 when the country’s president said it was difficult to discuss peace amid public anger over alleged atrocities perpetrated by Russian troops, and Russia’s foreign minister claimed that Western sanctions and arms shipments hindered the talks.
The comments from Ukrainian and Russian officials came when reports surfaced that some civilians could be evacuated from the besieged southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol as Russia continued its offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Operational Command South said late on April 30 that there was no way the Odesa runway could be used as a result of the rocket attack.
Odesa’s regional governor said the rocket was fired from Russian – occupied Crimea. Maksym Marchenko said that there was no reports of any injuries.
Elsewhere, another mass grave was found in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, the site of alleged civilian mass executions before it was taken back by Ukrainian forces in early March, the head of the Kiev regional police force said on April 30.
It came when Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister said Russian invading forces had stolen “several hundred thousand tons” of grain in the territory they have.
“Today there are confirmed facts that several hundred thousand tons of grain in total were taken from the regions of Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk,” Taras Vysotskiy told Ukrainian TV.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his latest televised speech on April 29 that Kiev’s forces were making tactical progress in the region, while a senior US defense official said on the same day that the fierce Ukrainian opposition slowed Russia’s Donbas offensive.
Zelensky’s office had previously said that an operation was planned to get civilians out of the huge Azovstal steel plant, where about 2,000 Ukrainian fighter jets are detained along with about 1,000 civilians. Later in the day, TASS reported that 25 civilians, including six children, had left the territory of the Azovstal steelworks. Later, Ukrainian soldiers inside the besieged facility were quoted by Western news agencies as saying that a group of 20 civilians would leave the facility.
“Twenty civilians, women and children … have been transferred to a suitable location and we hope that they will be evacuated to Zaporizhzhya, on territory controlled by Ukraine,” said Svyatoslav Palamar, Deputy Commander of the Azov Regiment.
Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, located in the northeast of the country, is said to have been the subject of grenade launches and artillery shelling on April 30. Zelenskiy said in his televised speech the night before that Ukrainian forces had recaptured a strategically important village near the city and evacuated hundreds of civilians.
The Ukrainian military said in its daily briefing on April 30 that the largest enemy losses took place near Izyum, in the Kharkhiv region bordering the Luhansk and Donetsk territories.
Aleksandr Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk, Russia, said air defense had prevented a Ukrainian plane from entering the region, and that the shelling had hit parts of an oil terminal, Russian news agencies reported.
The governor of another Russian region, Kursk, said several grenades were fired from Ukraine on April 30 at a checkpoint near its border. Roman Starovoit said in a video on his Telegram channel that there were no injuries or injuries.
Seven Ukrainian soldiers and seven civilians have been released in a prisoner-of-war with Russia on Saturday, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
“We are taking home 14 of our people: seven soldiers and seven civilians,” Vereshchuk wrote on Facebook and Telegram. “For me, this exchange is special: one of the female soldiers is five months pregnant.”
Zelenskiy told the nation on April 29 that the constant “brutal” bombings of infrastructure and residential areas “show that Russia wants to empty [the Donbas region] of all people “, saying that” the defense of our country, the defense of our people, is literally a struggle for life. “
He said that if Russian forces, which invaded Ukraine unprovoked in late February and have been accused of carrying out war crimes against civilians, “can even partially realize their plans, then they have enough artillery and aircraft to turn the entire Donbas into stone. . “
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Zelenskiy said Mariupol, once one of the oyster’s most developed cities, was now a “concentration camp among the ruins”.
Earlier that day, he told Polish journalists that Ukrainians were seeking retaliation for alleged atrocities by Russian troops, and “when that kind of attitude exists, it’s hard to talk about things.”
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has meanwhile dismissed the need for the UN to help secure humanitarian corridors from besieged Ukrainian cities. He also called on the West to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and said “difficult” negotiations with Kyiv would continue.
In a speech to Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV on April 29, Lavrov said he appreciated UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterre’s proposal to help evacuate Ukrainian civilians from besieged cities, but that “there is no need for anyone to give up. assistance in opening humanitarian operations. corridors. “
Russia’s Defense Ministry has confirmed that it carried out an air strike on Kyiv during Guterre’s visit to the Ukrainian capital on April 28, saying that “high-precision, long-range weapons” were used in an attack that they claimed had destroyed a missile production facility in Kyiv.
Journalist Vira Hyrych, who worked for RFE / RL’s Ukrainian service, was among those killed when a missile hit her apartment.
In comments published by China’s official Xinhua news agency on April 30, Lavrov said talks with Kyiv continue daily, with Moscow insisting on “the recognition of new geopolitical realities, the repeal of [Western] sanctions and the status of the Russian language. “
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators have not met face-to-face since late March, with Russian troops accused of carrying out war crimes and Western nations intensifying sanctions against Moscow and increasing military aid to Kyiv.
Lavrov told Xinhua that if the United States and the Western NATO military alliance “were really interested in resolving the Ukraine crisis, they should first of all wake up and stop supplying the Kiev regime with weapons and ammunition.”
Russia’s foreign minister also said Russia, which has been hit hard by sanctions over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, could “restructure” its economy to counter “illegal hostilities.”
French President Emmanuel Macron told Zelenskiy during a conversation on April 30 that his country would intensify military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
In Washington, Congress is preparing to consider US President Joe Biden’s $ 33 billion request to support Ukraine, a massive increase in funding that includes over $ 20 billion for weapons, ammunition and other military aid.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on April 29 that it had made minimal gains in the month since Moscow announced its focus on Ukraine’s military efforts in the east.
According to the US assessment, the official said, the Russian military was “at least several days after where they wanted to be” in its attempt to surround Ukrainian troops. The official described Russian troops’ efforts to move from Mariupol to advance against Ukrainian forces from the south as “slow and uneven and absolutely not decisive”.
The British Ministry of Defense said in its latest assessment that Russia had “been forced to unite and relocate impoverished and disparate units from the failed advance in northeastern Ukraine.” However, the British intelligence service said that many of the units “likely to suffer from weakened morale” and “lack of unit-level competence and inconsistent air support have made Russia unable to make full use of its combat force.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week threatened unspecified retaliation for Western arms shipments to Ukraine, while Lavrov said the West should not underestimate the increased risks of nuclear conflicts.
Russia’s invasion and increased rhetoric have led to concerns that the war in Ukraine could spread to neighboring Moldova, whose separatist Transdniester region is backed by Moscow and hosts Russian forces.
A series of recent explosions in Transdniester have led to allegations that Moscow is trying to destabilize Moldova.
Asked about the risk of war in Moldova during his interview with Al-Arabiya on April 29, Lavrov said that “Moldova should worry about its own future”, which indicated that the country was “drawn into NATO.”