Press digest – Ukraine

48th day of heroic resistance of Ukraine against Russian military invasion

 #BRAVEUKRAINE 

Bravery is Ukraine’s newest export. We tell the world: Be Brave like Ukraine 🇺🇦💪

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DESTRUCTION AND LOSSES

📌 In Bucha, 403 bodies of killed and tortured people who were killed during the occupation of the city by the Russian army were found. Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk: “They were brutally tortured and killed. Procedures are underway, they are conducted by the competent authorities under the close attention of the media.”

📌Also Russian invaders raped at least 25 girls and women in Bucha. The range of victim’s age was from 14 to 24. Nine of them became pregnant. 

📌As of the morning of April 12, a total of 186 children had been killed in Ukraine as a result of Russian hostilities. 344 children have been injured.

📌The UN recorded 1,842 deaths and 2,493 injuries of civilians in Ukraine, for a total of 4,335 victims because of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

📌Russian occupiers captured the ship’s crew in Mariupol, 18 Ukrainian sailors were taken to the temporarily occupied Donetsk — Ombudswoman Liudmyla Denisova. According to preliminary information, the occupiers may hold captive about 200 crew members of several ships that were blocked by the Russians in the port of Mariupol.

📌938 educational institutions were damaged by bombing and shelling by the armed forces of the Russian Federation. 87 of them were destroyed.

📌Rashists keep as prisoners almost 1,700 Ukrainian military and civilians, including 500 women.

📌In the Belgorod region of Russia, which borders the Kharkiv region near the Ukrainian border, the railway line was destroyed.

📌Over the past 24 hours, three civilians were killed, and eight others were injured in shelling by the invaders.

📌40% of high-rise apartment buildings in Mariupol are completely destroyed, which is about 2 million square meters. 84 thousand people lived in them. It will take $ 2.3 billion to build that much housing and create at least basic living conditions there, according to the Mariupol City Council.

📌 20,000+ civilians have died in Mariupol, as stated in a comment to the Associated Press by Vadym Boychenko, City Mayor.

📌Russian army continues a non-stop shelling of Kharkiv since yesterday. They are hitting the residential areas of the city; the number of victims is growing.

📌 In Severodonetsk, 8 shells hit the humanitarian center, where up to 300 people were fed daily; the center also provided bedridden sick people with food and hygiene products. The walls were destroyed, a significant fire in the warehouse broke out.

📌Russia continues kidnapping Ukrainians. Tens of thousands of refugees find themselves thousands of kilometers from home – Putin is deporting Ukrainians to Siberia and beyond the Arctic Circle, according to Western media. 11,000 people were sent to Siberia, 7,000 to the Far East, and 7,000 to the North Caucasus.

📌 Crimean Tatar Asan Ablyamitov has been kidnapped by Rashists in Melitopol region.

📌Three people were injured as a result of the use of an unknown poisonous substance by Rashists in Mariupol, — The founder of the Azov Regiment Andriy Biletskiy. 

📌Photo of the day

Chernihiv. Each of us inside looks something like this …

Photo: Alexandra Berezhna

 

RUSSIAN and BELORUSSIAN CONTEXTS

⚠️ An important witness and accomplice of Putin was caught. The Security Service of Ukraine has detained a People’s Deputy from the banned party “Opposition Platform – For Life” and Putin’s close friend Viktor Medvedchuk. He escaped house arrest and hid from the police for more than a month. It is known that Medvedchuk was Putin’s proxy in Ukraine and sponsored pro-Russian groups.

⚠️ Lukashenko called the atrocities in earlier occupied Bucha “a psychological operation made by the Englishmen”.

⚠️​​Highlights of Putin’s speech at the Vostochny Cosmodrome: 

  • The goal of the operation to protect Donbas is noble and it will be achieved.
  • A clash with anti-Russian forces in Ukraine was inevitable, it was only a matter of time.
  • Quantitative and qualitative potential of the satellite group of the Russian Federation will be significantly expanded.
  • Russia and Belarus will jointly build space infrastructure.
  • Russia does not plan to isolate itself, it is impossible to isolate Russia from the whole world.
  • Russia will develop its own competencies to replace those that it used to be able to buy for petrodollars.

⚠️British newspaper The Guardian: Russia receives military equipment and ammunition for the war against Ukraine from Iraq. It is supplied through contraband from Iran. According to sources, Russia received RPGs, anti-tank grenades and rocket-propelled grenades. In addition, Iran returned to Russia the donated S-300 air defense systems, as well as transferred its similar elaboration Bavar 373.

⚠️British intelligence predicts an escalation of military operations in the Donbas in the next 2-3 weeks. The invaders continue to withdraw troops from Belarus to move them to the east of Ukraine.

⚠️The aggressor also noted that Kyiv had publicly refused to comply with the Minsk agreements, “and it was impossible to continue enduring the genocide.” Mariupol residents who were forcibly deported to Russia receive such leaflets, the Mariupol City Council reports: “Our people are being taken to the most depressed regions of Russia. Putin’s ugly logic is now clear. First, they destroy a successful peaceful city by the Sea of Azov. And now they are driving people to Siberia and Sakhalin.”

***

“The Far East of Russia awaits you! 

Special conditions for the participants of the State Program of resettlement of compatriots from abroad who have chosen to live in the Far Eastern regions of the Russian Federation.

 – 170 thousand rubles for the fresh start. Payment to settle down

– 600 thousand rubles – housing certificate. 6 square meters for each settler.

– Up to 3 months accelerated acquisition of Russian citizenship 

– 8.5 thousand rubles – welfare in the absence of income in the amount of half the living wage. 

– Up to 2% interest rate – Far Eastern mortgage 

– 1 hectare – free land, Far Eastern hectare”.

📌The Minsk resident ran 21.5 km forming a line from the song “Oy, u luzi chervona kalyna” on the map.

📌 Putin believes that there are traitors inside FSB, so the purge began there. About 150 special service employees have been suspended by now, and some, including the head of the so-called 5th Service, Serhiy Beseda, have been detained.

📌India plans to additionally increase its supplies to Russia by $ 2 billion in order to overlap the supplies of products banned by international sanctions from exporting to Russia.

 

DEFENSE UPDATES

📌Estimated losses of the Russian Federation Army in Ukraine:

📌The Russian military forces continue partial blockade of the city of Kharkiv. 

📌In the Donetsk and Tavriya directions, the enemy is fighting and holding certain borders with forces from the Southern Military District. 

📌In the Southern Bug direction, the enemy does not stop trying to gain a foothold on the administrative borders of Kherson region. 

📌In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, our soldiers have repulsed six enemy attacks in the past 24 hours, destroyed four tanks, five armored units, twenty-six vehicles and eight enemy artillery systems.

📌Russia has already launched 1,540 missiles during the war against Ukraine, CNN quotes a senior source in the US Defense Department.

📌“The negotiation process is extremely difficult, it’s taking place online in working subgroups. But it is happening,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team. According to Podolyak, Russia adheres to its traditional tactics – publicly pressuring the negotiation process, including “certain public statements”

📌NATO predicts a new phase of the war in Ukraine: it will be even more difficult and bloody. NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană: “We will have a quick entry into the second stage of this war, which is already very bloody. It will be more complex, different in nature from the first stage, in a much wider area, both in the east, in the Donbass and in the south, towards the Crimea and Mariupol. So, according to our estimates, we are entering the second, even more difficult stage of this war, which seems to be dragging on. The new stage of Russia’s war against Ukraine will have a military component much closer to the classic war, in contrast to what happened in the first six weeks of the war. There will be civilian casualties. Because of this, the Allies decided to supply Ukraine with weapons adapted to the new situation and condemned the mass killings of civilians by Russians.”

📌French presidential candidate and far-right leader Marine Le Pen opposes energy sanctions against Russia, “because she does not want the French to suffer the consequences.”  At the same time, Le Pen says she is not in favor of lifting the rest of sanctions against Russia. Cartoonists have already portrayed what her statements look like.

📌The Minister of Finance of Ukraine Serhiy Marchenko gave an interview to the Financial Times. Key messages: 

 

  • The Ministry of Finance forecasts an increase in the budget deficit in April-May to $ 5-7 billion;
  • Infrastructure losses due to the war increased to $ 270 billion; 
  • The Cabinet of Ministers has cut down on government spending by $ 6 billion, but the revenue is just a bit over the half of the one we had before war;
  • Ukraine will continue to make payments on public debt to avoid default.

 

📌Today, Ukrposhta finally released postage stamps and envelopes “Russian warship, go fuck yourself”.

📌In Mariupol, a unit of the Mykolaiv 36th Naval Infantry Brigade as a result of a special operation, was able to get out of the enemy’s encirclement and connect with the Azov regiment, writes news.pn media with reference to one of the officers. “I can’t tell you the details, but I can say that now we have connected with the Azov regiment. Several hundred marines, including the wounded, managed to get out,” — he says.

📌The military leadership of Ukraine is currently checking the information on the possible use of chemical weapons by the Russian invaders in Mariupol. There is an assumption that it could be phosphorus ammunition.

📌The hacker group Anonymous “leaked” into the Internet about 200 thousand e-mails of the Russian Federation Ministry of Culture.

📌Russia plans to conduct terrorist attacks on its own territory to force anti-Ukrainian hysteria and to mobilize people. “Russian special services are planning a series of terrorist attacks to mine and blow up residential buildings, hospitals and schools in the Russian settlements. As well as rocket-bomb attacks on the city of Belgorod or one of the cities of Crimea.” Source: Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

 

CYBER-RESISTANCE AND DIGITAL VICTORIES

📌 Nokia is leaving the Russian market completely, they have announced its closure in Russia. The company is confident that the exit from the market will not affect their financial results of 2022.

📌 SberBank Online mobile application for iOS is no longer available for download and update in the App Store, in connection with the sanctions imposed on April 12. For the customers with an already installed application, everything will continue working with no restrictions on its use.

📌 American software vendor SAS Institute closes in Russia. Yesterday, April 11, the company laid off 300 employees of the Russian office, and will close the office by the end of the week.

📌 Huawei AppGallery stopped using MIR cards and removed a number of Russian banking applications. The company has excluded MIR cards from the list of payment options in its AppGallery. A number of mobile applications of Russian banks have disappeared from the store’s catalog, e.g., the applications VTB Online, Promsvyazbank and Otkrytie.

 

HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORS AND EVACUATION UPDATES

📌 As of April 12, 2,671 people were evacuated through evacuation corridors. 

📌 2343 people arrived to Zaporizhia from Mariupol and Berdyansk by their own transport. 208 of them are from Mariupol; 2,135 people were evacuated from the cities of Polohy, Vasylivka, Berdyansk and Melitopol in the Zaporizhia region.

📌 Occupation troops continue to block convoys of buses leaving Zaporizhia at the checkpoint in Vasylivka to evacuate people from Berdyansk, Tokmak and Energodar.

 📌 328 people were deported from Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Kreminna and Popasna Luhansk oblasts.

📌 During the evacuation, the occupying troops constantly violated the regime of silence.

 

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s daily statements 

📌On April 12, President Zelensky addressed the Lithuanian people: 

“I am grateful to you for the leadership. For being the first to abandon Russian energy now. When it is really necessary. I am grateful to you, Gitanas, for the important decision. For being the first to give us real help, to give us weapons. Stingers and more. It was a historic manifestation of leadership. After all, the Lithuanian people, like no other, understand how the occupiers can destroy freedom and at what cost the independence is rebuilt then, which you have done exemplary. This is exactly the kind of leadership the whole continent needs now.”

 

PUBLIC AND BUSINESS SUPPORT

📌 New May issue of Vogue Czechoslovakia, created in collaboration with Vogue Ukraine and STYLE NOT COM Instagram account. This is the first time a magazine has been published without photos on the cover. They were replaced by the words “Live, Ukraine!”, “How do you feel now?” and “Time of Empathy” – in solidarity with Ukrainian refugees and “respect for those who remained.”

“Forty-seven. That many days have passed since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Almost four million. That many people have already left their homes. The vast majority of them are women and children. We have provided them with financial assistance, but what will we offer them next? Will we be united and generous for another forty-seven days? Or forty-seven weeks? How do Ukrainian women in exile feel? What are they going through?

📌The New York Times publishes a map of civilian killings in Bucha, compiled thanks to journalists who were in Ukraine.

📌Three Polish designers launched the project “33 letters for Ukraine” on Instagram. Every day from March 7 to April 8, the project team published several images of one of the letters of the Ukrainian alphabet, created by artists from around the world. In this way, the designers wanted to show that Ukraine is an independent country with its own culture, history and language.

📌The Politico called the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhnyi a real hero and an “Iron General” whose fame didn’t go to his head.

📌Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz encouraged guests to donate to aid Ukraine at their wedding. Among those who made the largest donations are the bride’s parents, Nelson Peltz and Claudia Heffner.

📌Finnish fast-food chain Hesburger will close all restaurants in Russia within April.

 

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT OF UKRAINE

📌 The United States is willing to consider sending more weapon systems that require additional training to Ukraine, according to CNN referring to a senior defense official.

The official used the example of Switchblade drones. Ukrainian forces were not trained on the suicide drones, but the US determined that the system might help the Ukrainian military and found a way to train a small number of Ukrainian forces on it.

📌Europe has started assisting Ukraine in rebuilding its energy infrastructure. The first batch of emergency equipment from Europe has arrived in Ukraine to repair the energy infrastructure damaged by the war with Russia. The assistance was coordinated by the Secretariat of the Energy Community. 

“The Secretariat is doing everything within its power to help keep the lights on in Ukraine. The emergency supplies delivered will help safeguard access to energy for the people of Ukraine. In times of unprecedented crisis, the Energy Community and its Secretariat can be relied upon to help Ukraine meet its emergency needs,” said Artur Lorkowski, Director of the EU Secretariat.

📌In Warsaw, a complex of buildings belonging to Russia was nationalized. After the renovation, apartments for refugees from Ukraine will be built there, said the mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski.

📌Japan approved additional sanctions against 398 people and 28 organizations from Russia. The assets of Sberbank and Alfa-Bank will also be frozen from May 12. New investments in Russia are prohibited. A ban on imports of certain types of wood from Russia will come to power from April 19.

📌France sends out six Russian agents working under diplomatic cover.

📌Bulgaria refused to exchange classified information with Russia — the relevant decision has been made by the government.

📌Italy signed an agreement to increase gas imports from Algeria by 40%. This is the country’s first major deal to replace Russia’s gas supplies.

📌The Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine has returned to Kyiv.

📌The leaders of the three committees of the German parliament will arrive in Ukraine on Tuesday to hold negotiations with their colleagues in Verkhovna Rada, Spiegel reports.

📌The first 20 Bushmaster armored vehicles arrived in Ukraine from Australia.

 

📌Diplomatic delegations that moves back to Kyiv:

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba’s daily statements

📌 Russia is preparing another fake information wave against Ukraine. Their goal is to deprive the country of aid. This was announced by Dmytro Kuleba: “Russia knows arms supplies are essential for Ukraine and mobilizes all efforts to undermine them. Moscow prepared a massive info campaign targeting foreign media and politicians. Their troll factory may spam emails and flood comments with disinfo on Ukraine. Don’t fall for it”.

 

📌 Tweet of the day