Press digest – Ukraine

41th day of heroic resistance of Ukraine against Russian military invasion

DESTRUCTION AND LOSSES

📌 1,200 Russian war crimes have already been recorded in the Kyiv region. The National Police of Ukraine, with the participation of international investigators, is currently documenting all war crimes, interviewing local survivors and gathering evidence.

📌After the liberation from the Russian occupiers, only 3,700 people remained in Bucha, which is 12% of the pre-war population. In 2021, the population of Bucha was estimated at about 30 thousand people.

📌During the occupation of Vorzel (Kyiv region), Russian military servicemen threw a smoke grenade into the basement of a house where a 14-year-old child and a woman were staying. After that, they shelled the basement. As a result, the child was killed immediately, and the mother died two days later in the same basement.

📌In total, more than 430 children in Ukraine became victims of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation. 165 children killed, 266 received injuries of varying severity. These figures are not final, as work is in progress to reveal the cases in locations of active hostilities, in the temporarily occupied and liberated territories.

📌Russian occupiers continue to blockade Kharkiv, carrying on the artillery shelling and further destroying residential areas and civilian infrastructure of the city.

 📌On April 5, at night, from the territory of Belarus, two Su-35 aircrafts of the Russian Federation from the territory of Belarus struck with cruise missiles on the territory of Ukraine.  Three cruise missiles were destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses and a fourth was damaged. Belarus remains an accomplice of Russia in all criminal acts on the territory of Ukraine.

📌The Armed Forces of Ukraine published a video from the city of Gostomel in the Kyiv region liberated from the Russian occupiers.

📌Russian troops shelled Mykolayiv with cluster munitions prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Civilian quarters and medical facilities, including a children’s hospital, came under enemy fire. There are dead and wounded, including children.

📌In the temporarily occupied city of Polohy, Zaporizhia region, the Russians seized and mined the internal perimeter of the central hospital so that only wounded Russian servicemen could stay in the medical facility.

📌Russian occupiers during the shelling of Mariupol struck a foreign dry cargo, which was moored in the city port. As a result of the shelling, one crew member was injured. The ship is now sinking. Overall,  40% of houses can no longer be restored. 

☢️ On April 5, in the town of Rubizhne (Luhansk region), Russian troops fired a tank of nitric acid during a shelling.

☢️In the Ternopil region, 6 tanks with organic fertilizers were damaged due to the fall of enemy rocket fragments on Tuesday night – there was a leak of chemicals, the main component of which is ammonia. Ammonia leaked into groundwater.

📌 “The Russian Armed Forces destroyed evacuation buses and destroyed the entire fleet by March 13, a fleet we planned to use to evacuate people from Mariupol. To agree on a regime of silence and evacuation corridors, the city authorities informed the Russian party about the meeting point, and then Russian troops fired at them from Grads until total destruction,” Mayor Vadym Boychenko said. Russian troops appropriate the cars that belong to the local authorities of Mariupol in favor of the “DNR”.

⚠️According to the data available, the Russian occupiers are preparing a large-scale falsification in Mariupol to then accuse Ukraine of it. To do this, the bodies of Mariupol residents killed by the Russians are collected in one place to present them as mass victims of Ukrainian troops. At the same time, Russian propaganda has recently spread false claims that “Ukrainians are using civilians as human shields.” Meanwhile, it is known that Russian troops are killing Mariupol residents for refusing to accept Russian occupation – in early March the city already had to bury the dead in mass graves.

📌In Izyum, the Russian occupiers are fabricating evidence on the alleged crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Aiming to do so, they shelled the city and created a kind of “documentation”.

📌According to Ukrainian intelligence, the 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 35th All-Russian Army, whose servicemen committed massacre and tortures of the civilians in Bucha, is preparing to get back to Ukraine.

📌Among 86 Ukrainian servicemen released from Russian captivity there were women who were tortured and threatened and had their hair cut. Ombudsman Lyudmila Denysova appealed to the UN Commission over the abuse of prisoners by the Russian military.

📌As a result of the Russian invasion, more than 2 million Ukrainians aged 14-35 y.o. became internally relocated persons and another 2 million were forced to leave the country, which is 40% of the total number of young people in Ukraine. Above that, during the 40 days of the war, the Russians destroyed 17 Ukrainian youth centers and hundreds of educational institutions.

📌 Photo of the day 

Monument to Taras Shevchenko in Borodianka after the Russian occupation

INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

📌German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has for the first time acknowledged his own mistakes in Russia’s policy. “My adherence to Nord Stream 2 was clearly a mistake. We continued to believe in bridges that Russia no longer believed in and against which our partners had been warning us.  We failed on many points,  we have not been able to create a common European home, including Russia. We have failed to integrate Russia into a common security architecture”.

DEFENSE UPDATES

📌 Estimated losses of the Russian Federation Army in Ukraine:

📌For the first time by a direct road between the cities, 5 trucks of aid from the Ministry of Health and UNICEF arrived Chernihiv from Kyiv: generators, medicines, consumables and various equipment were delivered to meet the needs of hospitals in Chernihiv and the region

📌Units of the State Border Guard Service reached the state border of Ukraine in the Chernihiv region.

📌During the war, the IT Army attacked more than 600 Russian online resources. Since the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the Ministry of Digital Transformation has created an IT army that brought together IT specialists from Ukraine and the world to fight the enemy on the cyber front.

📌The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine plans to restore the connection on the Kyiv-Chop highway within the next two weeks. All destroyed bridges in the Kyiv region are also starting to be actively rebuilt.

📌Ukrainians support joining NATO less, while the level of support for joining the EU is growing. 

• In the first days of the war, support for Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance increased from 62% to 76%, in the first week the support decreased to 72%, and at the end of March it was 68%, i.e. approaching the pre-war levels. 
• Instead, support for EU joining is growing – in the first days of the war it grew from 68% to 86%, then continued to grow to 91% at the end of March – an absolute record for all years of research.

✅79% of Ukrainian refugees are going to return to Ukraine after the war. 

• Those are the data that became available on April 4, based on the results of a survey conducted by the Razumkov Center. 
• Among those polled, 89% believe that Ukraine will win this war, only 1% do not believe, and 10% are hesitant to answer.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s daily statements 

📌All crimes of the Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine are recorded. The necessary procedural basis is provided for bringing the guilty Russian military to justice for every crime they commit. This will be a joint work of Ukraine with the European Union and international institutions, in particular with the International Criminal Court. In many villages in the liberated districts of Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy oblasts, the Russian occupiers did things that World War II survivors did not see even during the Nazi occupation 80 years ago.

📌 On April 4, President Zelensky discussed Russia’s crimes with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Austrian Chancellor Nehammer. The parties agreed with Austria on the Chancellor’s visit to Ukraine in the near future.

 📌Ukraine is getting prepared for even more brutal activity of the occupiers in the eastern and southern areas. The country’s leadership knows what Russia is going to do in Donbass, near Kharkiv and in some other parts of the country.

📌Ukraine has started preparing all the necessary work to restore normal life in the liberated areas. Crimes are being documented, the territory is being cleared and demined.

 📌 On April 5, President Zelensky addressed the Spanish Parliament and the UN Security Council.

✅Highlights from President Zelensky’s video address to the UN Security Council:

• In his speech, Zelensky described in detail evidence that Russian troops massacred hundreds of civilians in the Kyiv suburb Bucha. He emphasized that Ukraine is committed to run a transparent investigation of all those crimes. “There is conclusive evidence. There are satellite images. Maximum access of journalists. Maximum cooperation with international institutions. Involvement of the International Criminal Court. Complete truth and full responsibility”.
  

• “What’s  the dirrefence between the crimes of the Russian Federation from those committed by the terrorists of ISIS in the occupied territory? Just the fact that it is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
  

• “Where is the security that the Security Council is supposed to guarantee?” Zelensky said, demanding Russia to be removed from its permanent seat on the Security Council, which gives it the ability to veto any actions proposed by other members of the group. “We are dealing with a state that is turning the veto in the UN Security Council into a right to die.”

• “Are you ready to close the UN?” “Today is the time to transform the system, the core of which is the United Nations. To do this, I propose to convene a global conference – already in peaceful Kyiv – to determine how we will reform the world security system, how we will really guarantee the inviolability of universally recognized borders and the integrity of states, and how we will assert the rule of international law”.

PUBLIC AND BUSINESS SUPPORT

📌Anbnb online accommodation, search and rental service has banned Russian and Belarusian citizens from booking accommodation around the world.

📌American ExxonMobil has frozen its Far Eastern LNG liquefied natural gas project in the port of De Castri, Russia. The cost of the project is estimated at $ 4.2 billion. The launch was planned for 2027-2028.

📌 Lead singer of the Ukrainian band Go_A performed the song “Imagine” before the football “Derby of Italy” between “Juventus” and “Inter”. Kateryna Pavlenko sang a song by John Lennon with Italian singer Gaia at the packed Juventus Stadium in Turin. 

📌British musician, vocalist of the band Hurts Theo Hutchcraft said that his heart was broken by Russia’s war against Ukraine and expressed hope that there were still Russians who felt the same way he did.

📌Football players of Italian “Roma” organized a charity auction in support of Ukrainian children. A limited collection of T-shirts with the flag of Ukraine in the shape of a blue-yellow heart on the sleeve and their autographs was exhibited as lots. Proceeds from the auction amounted to 22,770 euros.

📌Andriy Shevchenko and his son Jordan delivered a powerful speech about the war in Ukraine in front of 3,000 students in New York at the opening ceremony of the UN project “Change the World”. 

📌Cary Fukunaga, the director of the latest James Bond film “No Time to Die” and the “Real Detective” series, has arrived in Kyiv. The director visited the Kyiv metro stations: he delivered food to the temporary residents of the metro, as well as talked to volunteers and people who escaped and relocated from other cities. After that, Cary Fukunaga began filming the event at the subway station – to further cover the stories of those affected by the war.

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT OF UKRAINE

📌The Pentagon said that the United States would provide additional military assistance to Ukraine worth $ 300 million. In total, since the beginning of the invasion, the United States has provided military assistance worth $ 1.6 billion to Ukraine.

📌 The French Foreign Ministry announced that new sanctions against Russia could be adopted on April 6.

📌 The EU imposed an embargo on coal from Russia, banned Russian ships from entering EU ports, banned Russian and Belarusian carriers from entering the EU, and banned transactions with four key Russian banks, which together form nearly a quarter of Russia’s financial market.

📌The Spanish government has announced its intention to expel at least 25 Russian diplomats and employees of the Russian Embassy in Madrid.

📌 Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio announced the expulsion of 30 Russian diplomats, which is expected in the coming days.

📌Josep Borrell announced sanctions against Russian diplomats in the EU: “Russia’s illegal and disruptive actions against the interests and security of the EU and our Members States, including breaching the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic relations, are not staying without a response. That is why today, <April, 5> I decided to designate persona non

grata a number of officials of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the EU for engaging in activities contrary to their diplomatic status”. 

📌Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have condemned the killing of civilians by the Russian military in Bucha and called them war crimes.

📌The Parliament of the Czech Republic recognized the killings in Bucha and other cities of Ukraine as a war crime and voted to convene an international tribunal.

📌Latvia closes consulates in Daugavpils and Liepaja, and recognizes Russian diplomats from these consulates as personae non gratae. 

📌Estonia does the same in Tartu and the bordering with Russia city of Narva, as well as expels the staff of these consulates from the country, they must leave Estonia by April 30.

📌The United States will provide more than $ 1 billion in humanitarian assistance to 10 million Ukrainians who have become refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as to host countries.

📌German services have removed the world’s largest illegal Russian-language darknet market, Hydra Market. About 17 million customers and more than 19,000 sellers were registered on the trading resource.

📌 Tweet of the day