What a day yesterday: Russian bombs from land, sea and sky have devastated Ukraine. There have been deaths, injuries, and as their troops advanced, the Russians even launched a cyber attack: malware capable of destroying the data on a device making it unusable. The world has tried to react compactly: sanctions have been reinforced and international condemnation has been unanimous: the faces of the global leader loops on all televisions have appealed expressing concern, frustration, anger. Of course, “the most difficult day will be today” as the Ukrainian Defense Minister already says Anton Gerashenko. “The enemy’s plan is to break through with tanks from Ivankiv and Chernihiv and get to Kiev.” But in the meantime, let’s try to make a point of what happened in the hectic Thursday just ended.
The advance
The sad – and alas temporary – number of victims (military and civilians) speaks of 137 dead and 316 wounded on the Ukrainian front. During the night the capital Kiev was hit repeatedly. And at the crack of dawn, a missile attack hit a residential building and seriously injured three other people. The Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian plane over Kiev (but the Russians say that it is a Ukrainian plane and that they were the ones to take it down): the aircraft certainly fell on a nine-story building currently in flames. Not enough: the Russian tanks are now approaching. The city is under siege, with Ukrainian units defending the position from four fronts despite the numerical inferiority. To curb the advance towards the capital, they even blew up a bridge over the Teteriv River, in Ivankiv, 50 kilometers north of Kiev.
The battle for the conquest of Ukraine: a triple pincer of tanks and helicopters overwhelms the resistance
by Gianluca Di Feo
The protagonists
“The world continues to observe what is happening here from afar,” complains the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky saying he feels abandoned. “The sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow”, he repeats, “are not enough”. And he tries to relaunch the dialogue with yet another video message, also relaunched by CNN: “Sooner or later Moscow will have to talk to us. Discuss how you intend to put an end to this invasion. The sooner it will happen and the less the losses will be ”. But the real fear is that Moscow’s intentions are to overthrow his government and put a puppet leader in his place.
On the other hand, speaking on state TV, the Russian president Vladimir Putin he said it clearly: “The special military operation will serve to denazify Ukraine” (with all due respect to the fact that the current President Zelensky is Jewish) and to “demilitarize it”. That is, to have a harmless neighbor, who no longer aspires to join the European Union, much less the Atlantic Alliance.
The sanctions
Of course, the world reacted unanimously: sanctions were immediately imposed – and yesterday aggravated – by the European Union, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan, Taiwan just to name a few. Germany has blocked the certification of the Nord Stream2 gas pipeline on which Russia has invested 11 billion dollars. And those targeted are banks, exports, the military and members of Putin’s inner circle. For now, however, none directly affects Russian President Putin. But many analysts insist: “It is not enough”.
The American president Joe Biden yesterday met the national security council and spoke at the summit of G7 leaders where he defined the ongoing war as a “premeditated war” heralding “human suffering and a catastrophic loss of life”. Announcing, in the afternoon and with a very hard speech, new sanctions that hit “four other banks including the VTP, the second in the country.” Noting that the “Moscow stock exchange has already collapsed” and remembering that there is always the possibility of expelling Russia from the payment system international Swift: “it’s an option, although there are currently no plans to use it.” that will suffer sanctions. “Finally he announced the establishment of” a coalition of global partners representing more than half of the economy. We will limit Russia’s ability to work with dollars, yen, g them Euro “. Also in this case, Moscow reacts contemptuously: “The markets are having an emotional reaction, they will stabilize”. But economists are wondering how much the “Fortress Russia” that Putin has tried to build in recent years will actually be able to withstand.
Russia, the dissident historian Lev Ponomariov speaks: “Putin is crazy, he wants to dominate the world. Now the West is tough “
by our correspondent Rosalba Castelletti
The refugees
Meanwhile, it is already a refugee emergency. Thousands of Ukrainians are trying to flee to neighboring countries and Poland and Romania have opened their borders. According to American sources cited by the New York Times between one and five million Ukrainians could seek refuge in Europe, mainly passing through Poland, where US troops are stationed at the border ready to take care of regulating the flow. On the German media the numbers are more modest: between 800 thousand and one million. Still impressive. Much will depend on the intensity and length of the Russian attack. The UN Refugee Agency spoke of a rapidly deteriorating situation and asked neighboring countries to keep their borders open. The UN, the secretary general announced yesterday Anthony Guterres, it has allocated 20 million dollars for humanitarian emergencies in the country under attack by Russian troops.
The prosecutor at the head of the International Criminal Court is now also worried Karim Khan. His court, he announced, may soon investigate possible war crimes.