THE PHOTOGRAPH of the day (actually dozens of videos posted on social networks) is the protest of the citizens of Slavutych, a town north of Kiev and a few kilometers west of Chernikiv massacred by bombing and now semi-destroyed. Slavutych, which is five kilometers as the crow flies from the Belarusian border, is today the emblem of the fierce resistance of the Ukrainians to an invasion which they detest and repel with all the courage of their bare hands, brandishing a flag, descending in square everyone together, singing and shouting to the Russian soldiers “you are not welcome”, and “this is our city, go away”.
The Russians, having entered the city by their own means and with the promise that they would leave soon after having reclaimed the city from a possible armed presence, kidnapped the mayor Yuri Fomichiv (later freed) and “took control of the city hospital ”, perhaps suspecting that it was used as a civilian cover for military structures; but the whole city council met anyway, people do not trust the Russians took to the streets with flags and the pride of their nationality and freedom.
The balance of the invasion
In just over a month, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, “about 4,500 homes, 100 factories and shopping centers, four hundred schools and 150 hospitals and health facilities have been destroyed,” says Ukrainian Development Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov.
Among the cities most affected is Chernihiv, which is now home to less than half of its original population. There are now many more houses destroyed than those that resist, and it is still impossible to organize humanitarian corridors or to evacuate the wounded. The humanitarian situation is similar to that of Mariupol. The footbridge is under constant crossfire and it is too dangerous to supply the city with food and the bare minimum to survive. There is no electricity and water is also scarce.
The point of the fighting
The bombings have now also extended to the West, and Lviv has been hit directly: there are at least five wounded in the two attacks today. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Russians are not attacking in the direction of Volyn. In the direction of Polissya, however, they continue to bomb the Ukrainian settlements. In the north there were no offensives, and towards Slobozhansky the Russians consolidate their positions. Instead, the bombings of Kharkiv continue. In the Donetsk area the focal point continues to be the Russian attempt to storm Mariupol, with air strikes and artillery bombardments. The Russians are trying to conquer Popasna and Rubizhne, and are preparing the attack on Severodonetsk. There were also assaults in the direction of Avdiivka and the Novobakhmutivka settlement, but they were repulsed.
The units of the defense forces of Ukraine have repelled the attacks on Novomayorsky and towards Krasnohorivka, while in the Tavriya area the Russians are consolidating their positions. The Ukrainians instead concentrate their forces to counter the advance towards Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhia and to defend Mykolayiv and the controlled coastal areas on the Black Sea. Other main objectives, according to the Ukrainian General Staff, are protection and defense. critical infrastructures and the counter-offensive in the occupied territories. The battle continues in the ports, between artillery attacks and all-out defense.
In the meantime, the first two hundred Hezbollah mercenaries have already arrived in Gomel, Belarus, who would have been recruited after an agreement signed between Wagner and the Lebanese military organization. According to unofficially confirmed press sources, the agreement would provide for the recruitment of 800 people with a salary of $ 1,500 a month to fight alongside the Russians in Ukraine. The goal would be house-to-house warfare, in urban centers: a technique developed over years of fighting in Syria, from where the horde of mercenaries sent to Belarus would come, and the dislocation would suggest that it would be used in Kiev or in the West. of the country. This too, perhaps, together with the vast range of action with which the Russian armed forces continue to operate, convinced US President Joe Biden to curb the hypothesis, advanced yesterday by the Russians themselves, that their strategic objective is limited to the Donbass: “I’m not sure the Russians’ strategy has changed,” Biden said today
Diplomacy at work
President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to press on the international community and today it was Qatar’s turn. At the Doha Forum he said that the world in the twentieth century has developed a series of international structures to guarantee justice but Ukraine has not found justice for 31 days, pointing the finger at the UN and all the other structures that “do not have sufficient strength within them to give people back the fundamental value: peace. We need a real reform of international institutions, so that someone who is 28 times bigger than another cannot afford to attack him ”. Zelensky recalled that Ukraine is one of the main exporters of wheat, vegetable oil and corn which guarantee stability in many countries of the world, but “the Russians are undermining the fields and destroying the equipment. Qatar is a reliable and reputable supplier of energy resources and can help stabilize the situation in Europe. I urge you to increase energy production ”.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden is still raising the bar against Russian President Vladimir Putin, defined in recent days as a “war criminal”: speaking with the refugees he met in Warsaw, today he called him “a butcher”. In Warsaw, Biden and his foreign minister, Antony Blinken (who will be in Israel tonight to meet Prime Minister Naftali Bennett), met with Ukrainian foreign and defense ministers.
Humanitarian and refugee corridors
Four humanitarian cordons organized in the area of the capital Kiev, six in Donbass in the Lugansk region. In the Donetsk region, however, the problem of the salvation of the survivors in Mariupol continues unresolved, destroyed by incessant bombing. From Mariupol to Zaporozhye there is a humanitarian corridor which can only be traveled by one’s own means of transport. The buses do not pass, the Russians do not allow it and for this reason the general evacuation of the residents of Mariupol is still missing today.
“Millions of people are fleeing the bombs that fall on Ukrainian cities. They are leaving their homes and their lives behind to escape to other parts of Ukraine or neighboring countries,” recalled the president of the European Commission. Ursula von der Leyen, and “every second, since the start of the war, a Ukrainian child becomes a refugee. The world must defend them”.