Press digest – Ukraine
56th 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
📌More than 500 000 of Ukrainians, 121 000 of which are children, were forcibly relocated to the territory of Russia from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Serhiy Kyslytsia, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN, announced this.
❗️At least 20,000 Ukrainians are being kept in filtration camps on the Mangush-Nikolske-Yalta line and about 5,000-7,000 in Bezymyanny, Donetsk region.
❗️Citizens of Ukraine are being sent to the depressed regions of Russia, in particular to the northern regions and Sakhalin Island. At the same time, documents are issued, prohibiting Ukrainians from leaving the Russian regions for two years.
❗️Russian invaders continue to forcibly relocate Ukrainians from temporarily occupied territories to Russia, as Nazi Germany once did.
📌205 children died due to the armed aggression of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. 373 children were injured.
📌As a result of the shelling by the invaders in the village Stara Buda, Bucha district, 2 children aged 6 and 8, were injured, after which they were forcibly transported to Mozyr (Belarus) on the same day by the Russian military.
📌The Russian occupiers are to set up pseudo-referendums to legalize the occupation administrations in Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.
📌In Kharkiv, the bodies of 112 victims were retrieved from the rubble at 40 sites. At the same time, 59 people were rescued, said Volodymyr Demchuk, director of the SES Emergency Response Department.
📌The historical center of Mariupol is practically destroyed by the barbaric shelling of Russian war criminals. The houses that survived the Nazi occupation did not survive the “liberators” from the Russian Federation.
📌The hemodialysis department of the clinic in Bashtanka in the Mykolaiyv region has been destroyed, there are victims, the chairman of the Mykolaiyv regional council Anna Zamazeeva reported.
📌In the Feldman Ecopark of Kharkiv, the bodies of the employees shot by Russians, whom these Nazis killed and barricaded in the back room, were found. Since the first days of the war until their death, they helped to feed the animals.
📌Ukrainian intelligence reports that Russia plans to carry out forced mobilization in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions after pseudo-referendums. Ukrainians are to be sent into the hottest spots of the front to attack the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
📌Rescuers dismantled all the rubble of buildings in Borodyanka, Kyiv region, after the Russian offensive, and found the bodies of 41 people under the rubble.
📌On April 19, the Russian military abducted Oleg Budyak, director of the local history museum in the village of Osipenko in the Berdyansk district. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
📌In the evening of April 20, air raids were heard simultaneously all over Ukraine again. It’s been reported about the attack on Mykolayiv and a number of other cities too.
📌 Photo of the day
The photo of Irpin after a month of Russian occupation.
Not a single whole building remained
RUSSIAN CONTEXT
⚠️The new attack on the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine could last for “several months”, a senior UK national security official warned the British government, according to The Independent report.
⚠️The company “Beverages from Chornogolivka – Aqualife” has applied to Rospatent for registration of the RuCoLa brand instead of Coca-Cola, according to Russian media. The Coca-Cola Company is going to sue.
⚠️ An attempt to replace cards of Visa and MasterCard payment systems in Russia with cards from the Chinese UnionPay failed, Kommersant writes.
⚠️The circle of Putin’s close associates has narrowed since the beginning of the war – Bloomberg. According to the publication, earlier Putin regularly consulted with a “limited group of hardliners” – in particular, the decision to launch the “operation” was made by the president together with a “handful of hawks”, including Minister Sergei Shoigu, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. Who is in Putin’s inner circle now, Bloomberg’s source did not specify.
⚠️ Amid the failures at the frontline, Moscow began a “cleanup” of the leaders of the “LPR”. According to the information received by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, “Major General of the Interior of the Luhansk People’s Republic”, Major General Igor Kornet was arrested by the Russian FSB and is currently being held in the FSB detention center in Rostov-on-Don.
⚠️ Starting from September 1, 2022, Russian schools will hold propaganda classes in order to explain children the “goals and objectives” of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
DEFENSE UPDATES
📌 Estimated losses of the Russian Federation Army in Ukraine:
📌For the past 24 hours, the Air Force of Ukraine destroyed a Russian fighter, a helicopter, a cruise missile and five drones — the Air Force Command.
📌During the day April 19 on the southern borders of the defense, the Russian army lost 19 military and 6 units of equipment, including armored vehicle, automobile unit and UAV “Orlan-10”. Russia’s naval group in the Black Sea continues to maneuver, there is a threat of missile strikes, landing is not carried out. Reconnaissance of the Ukrainian positions is held thanks to reconnaissance drones, which our air defense forces continue to accurately destroy — Vladislav Nazarov, an officer of the OC “South”.
📌Since the beginning of the war, Russia has lost 3.5 times more military equipment than Ukraine. Such data is provided by the Oryx analytical project.
📌The grouping of forces that the Russians have is not enough to do with Mykolaiv what they did with Mariupol, the mayor of Mykolaiv Oleksandr Senkevych said. According to him, the troops of the Russian Armed Forces are at a distance of 20-30 kilometers from the city, and the fighting is taking place near the Oleksadrivka – Stanislav line.
📌The IAEA has managed to re-establish direct links with the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian military occupation for more than a month.
📌Marines and Azov regiment rescued about 500 fighters from the port of Mariupol. Soldiers of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, together with other units of the Armed Forces and the National Guard, successfully conducted a joint special operation to evacuate border guards and police at the Azovstal plant.
📌Commander of the 36th Marine Brigade Serhiy Volyna, stationed at Azovstal in Mariupol, appealed to the world leaders to take out civilians, wounded and defenders of the city to the territory of a third country.
📌On April 19, during demining works in Kyiv region, the specialists neutralized 679 explosive devices, with a total of 17,180 units during the entire period of demining works. Also on April 20, a powerful air bomb was found near the military hospital in Irpen; the bomb was successfully neutralized.
📌The juvenile police of Ukraine have launched a chatbot in Telegram to search for missing children with whom communication is lost — “Search for children”.
HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORS AND EVACUATION UPDATES
📌The humanitarian corridor from Mariupol did not work as planned today, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. According to her, the occupiers failed to provide a ceasefire because they do not control their own military.
📌The military and civilians are ready to be evacuated from Mariupol with the support of a third party.
📌Mykhailo Podolyak and Davyd Arahamia expressed readiness to come to Mariupol for talks with the Russian side on evacuation from the city.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s daily statements
🇺🇦President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine is ready for any format of exchanging its civilians and military blocked by Russia in Mariupol for Russians:
“We are ready for various formats of exchanging our people for the Russian people, the Russian military, whom they left behind. They left the corpses and the wounded people. Therefore, for the sake of our people, both military and civilian, we are ready for any exchange format”.
🇺🇦 President Zelensky met with the President of the European Council Charles Michel. The presidents discussed defense, financial assistance to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. Topics also included European integration, movement and preparation for the reconstruction of Ukraine after the war.
🇺🇦 A plan to strengthen sanctions against Russia was published on April 20. It imposes restrictions on Russia’s energy sector, the banking sector, export-import operations, and transport. The nearest steps should include an oil embargo and a complete restriction on oil supplies from Russia.
🇺🇦 “Russia should be recognized a sponsor of terrorism, and the Russian Armed Forces should be identified as a terrorist organization.”
🇺🇦 The situation in the east and south of Ukraine remains as tough as only possible. The Russian occupiers do not give up trying to win at least some victory for themselves due to a new large-scale offensive.
PUBLIC AND BUSINESS SUPPORT
📌British architect and designer Norman Foster, who worked on the design of Apple’s headquarters, told how to begin the restoration of Kharkiv, reports the city council. The architect has already created a draft of city manifesto, which will be further adjusted:
“The first step is to make a master plan of the city linked to the region, to combine the most beloved and revered heritage of the past with the most desirable and greenest elements of infrastructure and buildings – in other words, to create the city of the future now and plan your life for decades to come. In the midst of the pandemic, London updated the master plan, which was based on a plan put into operation in the darkest days of World War II. The master plan is an act of confidence in the future for future generations”, — said Norman Foster.
According to the mayor Igor Terekhov, about 25% of administrative and residential buildings have been destroyed in Kharkiv.
📌Tallinn City Administration has decided to create the Ukraine square in the Estonian capital.
📌Monuments to the Red Army were demolished in three Polish cities today, Polskie Radio reports. “No Soviet relic with the symbols of the communist system should frighten people in public today,” said Karol Nawrocky, president of the Institute of National Remembrance.
📌Wimbledon organizers plan to ban all tennis players from Russia and Belarus from participating in the tournament, according to The New York Times, citing its own sources.
📌Canadian pop-punk band Simple Plan created a video for a song dedicated to the war in Ukraine. Funds raised from this video will be donated to UNICEF to help affected Ukrainian families.
📌South Korean actress Lee Young-ae donated almost $83,000 to support Ukrainians affected by the war.
📌Famous Hollywood actor Liev Schreiber did not stay away from Russia’s war against Ukraine. He went to Poland, where he actively helps volunteers prepare food for Ukrainian migrants.
📌Image of the movingly “Kyiv Madonna” (Tatiana Blyznyak with her three-month-old daughter), who was hiding in the subway from the “liberators” – now is in a Catholic church in Naples. The author of the painting is Maryna Solomennikova, an artist from Dnipro.
📌The American company “AeroVironment” will transfer 100 Quantix Recon drones to Ukraine. Manufacturers claim that drones can fly undetected and won’t be affected by RF jammers.
📌The Japanese corporation Toshiba suspends the acceptance of the new orders and investments in Russia, according to the company’s website. In addition, the company will donate 100 million yen to provide humanitarian assistance to the Ukrainian people.
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT OF UKRAINE
📌European Council President Charles Michel arrived to Kyiv and visited Borodyanka. ”In Borodyanka, like Bucha and too many other towns in Ukraine, history will not forget the war crimes that have been committed here. There can be no peace without justice,” says Charles Michel. The politician also called Kyiv “the heart of a free and democratic Europe.”
📌Ukraine has received additional military aircraft from other countries, as well as spare parts for them, the Pentagon said.
📌The United States plans to provide another $800 million military aid package to Ukraine — “CNN” reported. Answering questions of journalists, President Biden said that the United States plans to send more artillery to Ukraine.
📌Norway has handed over 100 “Mistral” anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine, Reuters reports, referring to the country’s defense ministry. “Mistral” MANPADS (Man-portable air-defense system) designed to destroy helicopters and aircraft at low altitudes.
📌Howitzer ammo has arrived in Europe for Ukraine, — senior US defense official said to CNN.
📌Germany «by the beginning of summer» is going to halve the import of Russian oil and bring it to zero by the end of the year, and then this will also apply to gas.
📌Ministers of Finance and officials of Ukraine, the US and the EU left the G20 meeting when Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov began his speech.
📌 Tweet of the day
It is unfair that Ukraine is still forced to ask for what its partners have been storing somewhere for years. If they have the weapons that Ukraine needs here, needs now, if they have the ammunition that we need here and now, it is their moral duty first of all to help protect freedom. Help save the lives of thousands of Ukrainians.
Photo: Alexey Furman, Alessio Paduano, Daniel Carde, Alex Kent, Roman Pilipey, Rodrigo Abd, Ukrainian Warface, Marco Djurica