Press digest – Ukraine
49th 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 🇺🇦💪
DESTRUCTION AND LOSSES
📌As of the morning of April 13, 2022, 191 children died and more than 349 were injured to varying degrees as a result of the Russian aggression. The children were affected most in: Donetsk region — 113, Kyiv region — 102, Kharkiv region — 79, Chernihiv region — 54, Mykolaiv region — 40, Kherson region — 38,
Luhansk region — 36, Zaporizhia region — 23, capital city — 16, Sumy region — 16, Zhytomyr region — 15.
📌During the recording of criminal offenses committed by the invaders in the Borodyanka village and the Korolivka village of Kyiv region, burnt bodies of a 16-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy were found.
📌 The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation threatens to strike at “decision-making centers” in Ukraine, primarily in Kyiv.
📌On April 11, the armed forces of the Russian Federation fired on the civilian infrastructure of Kharkiv. A one-and-a-half-month-old baby and a 12 years old child died. Another four children aged 1, 4, 5 and 9 years old were injured.📌On April 11, a 15-year-old girl was seriously injured in a residential building in the Kherson region.
📌Tonight, Russian troops fired on a railway station in central Ukraine. For safety reasons, the route and schedule for 17 passenger trains have been changed. This led to train delays. The longest delay was 7 hours 23 minutes. Security is a key priority. None of the passengers or railway workers were injured in the shelling.
📌In the Donetsk and Tavriya directions, the enemy continues to carry air strikes on Mariupol. They are launching an attack near the Azovstal metallurgical complex and the sea port.
📌Massive bombings and shelling by the Russian armed forces of Ukrainian towns and villages damaged 957 educational institutions, 88 of which were destroyed.
📌 Columns of military equipment of the Russian Army were spotted near the settlements of Solota and Valuyka on the route leading to the border with Ukraine. They are moving to the east of Ukraine, as evidenced by satellite images of the Belgorod region of Russia from April 11.
📌 The military intelligence of Ukraine has repeatedly recorded the use of mobile crematories in the Chernihiv and Luhansk regions and the city of Mariupol. In particular, there are 13 mobile crematories in Mariupol to clean the streets from the bodies of dead civilians. The occupiers are trying to identify and destroy all potential witnesses of the atrocities through filtration camps.
📌“As a result of the artillery shelling with phosphorus ammunition in the Novodanylivka village, Pologiv district, the roof of a residential building on Khrustalkova Street caught fire. Units of the Zaporizhia region SESU eliminated the consequences. No one was injured in the fire,” — Zaporizhia RSA reported. Earlier, the use of chemical weapons by Russians against the military and civilians was also recorded in Donetsk region.
📌 The governor of Kharkiv region Oleh Synegubov said that, during the day, 22 civilians were injured in the region, including 5 children. 7 people died. There were more than 50 shellings.
📌 Adviser to the mayor of Mariupol said that in the temporarily occupied city, the military of the Russian Federation and the “Donetsk People’s Republic” are preparing a “victory parade” on May 9.
📌 At least seven people were injured because of a missile strike by the Russian occupiers on Cherkaske in the Donetsk region. The strike occurred on the morning of April 13, damaged apartment buildings.
📌 According to Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko, about 150,000 residents have been evacuated from Mariupol, which has been blocked by Russian troops since the beginning of the siege. About 120,000 people remain in the city. In addition, 60,000 residents are awaiting evacuation in the settlements around Mariupol. At the same time, tens of thousands of people were forcibly deported by the Russian occupiers to the most depressed regions of Russia – to Siberia, Sakhalin, the Far East.
📌 In the Sumy region, during the active hostilities, the Russian occupiers killed more than 100 civilians. Searching for the missing people continues. Losses due to the destruction of local infrastructure have already exceeded 10 billion hryvnias.
📌 The Russian occupiers committed especially large-scale robberies — in Melitopol, they stole the funds that were supposed to be paid for pensions and subsidies in April through the Ukrposhta. This was reported by the General Director of Ukrposhta Igor Smilyansky.
📌 As a result of a missile strike by Russian troops on April 12 on Myrhorod, the infrastructure of the city’s airfield was severely damaged.
📌 Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, the Russian occupiers have killed 20 journalists.
📌 French President Emmanuel Macron refused to call Russia’s actions in Ukraine “genocide”: “I will be careful with such terms today because these two nations [Russians and Ukrainians] are brothers. What we can say with confidence is that the situation is unacceptable and that these are war crimes. We are experiencing war crimes that are unprecedented on our land — our European land.”
📌Photo of the day
Kharkiv old man in front of his house, destroyed by Russian shelling
RUSSIAN CONTEXT
⚠️ Russia continues to covertly mobilize and openly recruit mercenaries from the East to conduct offensive operations in Ukraine.
⚠️ The current President of France Emmanuel Macron refused to call what is happening during the aggressive offensive of Russia in Ukraine, the genocide.
⚠️Invaders continue to transfer so-called “volunteers” to Ukraine. Thus, according to available information, a battalion of about 400 people has been formed in the Leningrad region. It consists exclusively of servicemen with combat experience. They were sent to Ukraine to reinforce one of the units of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division of the 58th Guards Army.
DEFENSE UPDATES
📌 According to current data, the Russian FSB tried to deport fugitive Member of Ukrainian Parliament and a close family friend of Russian President Putin Viktor Medvedchuk first to Transnistria and later to Moscow. We will remind that yesterday, SSU detained him on departure from the Kyiv region.
📌 Estimated losses of the Russian Federation Army in Ukraine:
📌Ukrainian defenders in Donetsk and Luhansk regions repulsed six enemy attacks on April 12, reported in the Joint Forces Operation. The soldiers caused damage to the Russian invaders and destroyed their equipment, namely, three enemy artillery systems, two units of motor vehicles, two unmanned aerial vehicles, and one helicopter.
📌During April 12, pyrotechnics seized and neutralized 3,480 explosive devices, including two aerial bombs. In total, since the beginning of the war, rescuers have neutralized more than 58,000 explosive devices.
📌The Pentagon will hold a private session today with eight leading US weapon manufacturers to discuss arms supplies to Ukraine if the war with Russia continues for years, Reuters sources reported.
📌Russia has set up two military bases to replenish supplies in southern Ukraine and the occupied Crimea to support its operations in Mariupol, Kherson and Mykolaiv. In the photo, one of such bases is in Dzhankoy. According to the US officials’ estimate, there are about 55 combat teams in the south.
📌 Since the beginning of the war, 26,653 babies have been born in Ukraine. Most newborns are in Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Vinnytsia, Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. Most of these children are internally displaced persons from areas of active hostilities.
📌 Almost 1 million Ukrainians who left Ukraine after the start of a full-scale Russian invasion have returned. The spokesman of the State Border Guard Service Andriy Demchenko told about it at the briefing on April 12.
📌 500 thousand people in the world played the game Play for Ukraine, which blocks Russian sites.
📌 National Guard of Ukraine found a large storage of ammunition of the occupying forces in the village of Korolivka, Kyiv region. About 100 boxes of 125-caliber shells were found.
📌Event of the day
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s daily statements
📌 President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met in Kyiv with the Presidents of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
📌 On April 13, President Zelensky addressed the Estonian Parliament and called on the need to completely block Russian banks at the EU level in a new sanctions package against Russia. He also asked to finally add oil to the sanctions package.
HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORS AND EVACUATION UPDATES
📌 On April 13, no humanitarian corridor opened. According to Irina Vereshchuk, in the Zaporozhzhya region, the Russian military blocked evacuation buses, and in the Luhansk region, they were violating the ceasefire.
PUBLIC AND BUSINESS SUPPORT
📌 Google has removed the mobile app of Sberbank of Russia on Android from the Google Play store.
📌 A word dedicated to Ukraine, “Ukrained”, has appeared in the online dictionary of English-language neologisms and slang phrases Urban Dictionary.
📌 For four weeks now, European and American cities have been hosting the March of Ukrainian Mothers, who were forced to leave their homes with their children due to the war. This weekend, the Mother’s March was in Krakow, Bratislava and Chisinau, as well as for the third time – in Munich and the fourth – in Atlanta. Dolls in bloody sheets, symbolizing hundreds of children killed by the Russian military, are being added to the action.
📌 The video is spreading on the Internet, in which Elon Mask’s mother May Musk allegedly speaks Ukrainian. In fact, the video was created with the help of artificial intelligence – the Share UA Voices initiative, which transforms the voices of American stars to hear how they will sound in Ukrainian. And later, Musk published this video herself and called for donations to help Ukraine.
📌 If someone is wondering how powerful the power of the European dream is now, he should go not to Paris or Rome, not to Brussels and not to Berlin. It is worth going to Kyiv, writes in the pages of The Atlantic Dutch writer and philosopher Rutger Bregman.
📌 Well-known Russian journalist and blogger Yuri Dud dedicated a new video to refugees from Ukraine and selfless people who help them.
📌 On April 12, the charity Match for Peace #StopWarInUkraine between Legia and Dynamo took place at the Legia Warszawa Stadium in Warsaw. This is the first match in a series of charity events in support of Ukraine. Thus, all the proceeds from ticket sales, as well as donations that will come during the TV broadcast, are aimed to solve the biggest humanitarian problems that have arisen due to the full-scale war of the Russian Federation in Ukraine.
📌In the Czech Republic, almost a billion Czech crowns have been donated to Ukraine. That’s about $ 40 million. The money was sent to special accounts of the Ukrainian Embassy in the Czech Republic. Specialists from the Czech Ministry of Defense are helping to purchase the necessary weapons with these funds. The Czech government has even offered an additional incentive for companies that donate weapons to Ukraine and offer a tax rebate. And the Czech city of Brno offers free training for Ukrainians returning home to fight.
📌“Ukrainians went about their business until February 24, and then suddenly began to bomb themselves, demolish entire cities… And Putin just came to visit”, Russian businessman, public and political figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky is trying to reach the people of Russia again.
📌 In Tallinn, women arranged a demonstration next to the Russian embassy to protest against the mass rape of Ukrainian women by Russian soldiers.
📌The famous Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (“The Last Imperor”, “The Revenant”) shares new recording to support Ukraine, titled “Zero Landmine 2022” and shared with the message “No War”. All proceeds from the release will go towards not-for-profit organisation Care.org to support their humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Listen to the track below and buy “Zero Landmine 2022” here.
📌Italian coffee producer Lavazza stops operating in Russia. At the same time, the company stated that it is forced to temporarily suspend sales in Ukraine due to rising raw material prices in the “extremely difficult and challenging” year 2022.
📌The popular independent film company A24 (“Uncut Gems”, “The Green Knight”, “The Lighthouse”, “Midsommar”, “Hereditary”) stops the distribution of its films in Russia.
📌American actor Liev Schreiber has joined the team of World Central Kitchen chefs in Przemyśl, Poland, who prepare food for Ukrainian refugees.
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT OF UKRAINE
📌Thirty countries are allocating 60 million barrels of oil from their reserves to counter Russia’s rising energy prices. This was announced by US President Joe Biden. He called it the greatest “release in history.”
📌Argentina and Chile have suspended supplies of lithium ore to Russia.
📌US President Joe Biden has announced for the first time that Putin is committing genocide in Ukraine. These words were expressed during a speech on rising fuel prices in the United States: “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank — none of this should depend on whether the dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.”
📌France has frozen 23 billion euros in Russian assets.
📌Switzerland has adopted the fifth package of sanctions against Russia. The government has banned the import of coal, wood, and vodka from Russia.
📌The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been suspending Russia’s membership in the Nuclear Energy Agency. Russia became a member in 2013.
📌The presidents of Poland (Andrzej Duda), Lithuania (Gitanas Nauseda), Latvia (Egils Levits) and Estonia (Alar Karis) arrived in Ukraine. The leaders of the countries arrived in Kyiv to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky. Also during the visit, the Presidents visited Borodyanka, which was destroyed by Russian troops in the Kyiv region.
📌 Tweet of the day
📌The EU Council has approved a proposal for the exchange of Ukrainian hryvnia in the EU. This is a step in support of Ukrainian immigrants, who have found it extremely difficult to exchange hryvnia for euros or other currencies in European countries. The document must be approved in writing by April 19.
📌President Joe Biden has extended the state of emergency in the United States for a year due to harmful activities of the Russian Federation, the White House reports.
📌The new UK sanctions against the Russian Federation include 206 individuals and legal entities from the Russian Federation. Among them there’s a co-owner of Lukoil Vagit Alikperov, Vladimir Yakunin, Viktor Medvedchuk, the “LPR” battalion Zarya, the founder of AFK Sistema Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Sergey Fursenko, Gazprombank, Otkritie Bank, Rossiya Bank, the son of businessman Suleiman Kerimov Said Kerimov, SOGAZ, and a wife of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.