Major cities under rocket fire – Selenski warns collaborators

new York According to Ukrainian sources, Russian troops fired rockets at several large cities in the south of the country on Saturday night. Two or three heavy explosions were heard in the city of Dnipro, the portal Ukrajinska Pravda reported, citing the regional administration.

The area around the city of Kryvyi Rih was fired at with rocket launchers. A gas station caught fire, said the head of the local military administration, Olexander Wilkul. According to him, the Russian forces used Grad (Hagel) multiple rocket launchers.

Like all reports from the combat zones, the information was not independently verifiable. Vikul said that the Kryvyi Rih district and the Dnipropetrovsk region as a whole are stable in the hands of the Ukrainian army.

According to Ukrainian sources, Russian troops also fired rockets at a city not far from the port city of Odessa. The Russians fired three Iskander missiles from the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, the head of the regional administration, Maxym Marchenko, wrote on Telegram on Friday evening. There have been injuries. He did not give any further details.

Odessa, with its port on the Black Sea, is considered a strategically important city. On Tuesday, the city of Mykolaiv, about 130 kilometers to the north-east, had already been heavily shelled and has so far blocked the land route to Odessa for Russian troops.

Red Cross convoy wants to evacuate civilians from Mariupol again

According to Ukrainian sources, another exchange of prisoners took place with Russia. A government representative said the Russian side had released 86 Ukrainian soldiers from captivity. It was initially not known how many Russians were released in return. The exchange was the result of the ongoing peace negotiations.

An International Red Cross (ICRC) convoy will make another attempt to evacuate civilians from the besieged port city of Mariupol this Saturday. On Friday, the ICRC team had to call off a rescue operation intended to escort a convoy of 54 Ukrainian buses and private vehicles out of the city.

The evacuation from Mariupol was approved by both sides, the ICRC said in a statement. Important details such as the exact timetable and the destination of the convoy still have to be worked out.

Ukrainian Air Force: Continued air supremacy

According to its commander, the Ukrainian air force still sees the skies over Ukraine in its hands despite heavy Russian attacks. “The enemy did not and does not control the Ukrainian skies,” said Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk. The General Staff in Kyiv published the statements on Facebook on Friday evening.

After the attack on February 24, Russia tried to eliminate the Ukrainian air force. This was not successful. In the meantime, the Russian air force is attacking less with planes, but bombing from a distance with rockets. Oleshchuk demanded more modern weapons from Ukraine’s allies, including fighter planes and medium- and long-range anti-aircraft missile systems. The weapons could also be of foreign design.

The lieutenant general’s statements on the remaining strength of the Ukrainian air force could not be independently verified. His troops have suffered casualties. But Oleshchuk made the statement on the day two suspected Ukrainian helicopters set fire to a fuel depot in the Russian city of Belgorod.

At the beginning of the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had repeatedly demanded that NATO set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine. NATO refused to avoid fighting between aircraft from Russia and the Western alliance.

Other current reports on the crisis:

Warning to collaborators

President Zelensky has also warned Ukrainians in the Russian-controlled south of the country not to accept posts in the occupation regime. In a video speech, he called such people Gauleiter as with the National Socialists. “My message to them is simple: responsibility for the collaboration is unavoidable.” According to Ukrainian sources, Russia is trying to establish pro-Moscow administrations in the occupied territories.

Meanwhile, the pro-Russian separatists in the Luhansk region said the mayor of the city of Rubishne had defected to them. Mayor Serhiy Chortyv called on the Ukrainian troops to lay down their arms. Rubishne is the eighth largest city in the Luhansk region and had around 60,000 inhabitants before the war. The city has not been in the hands of the Separatists so far. Kiev politicians threatened Khortyv with retaliation.

A major general of the reserve of the Ukrainian secret service SBU was arrested while trying to illegally defect to Hungary. At the border, he pretended to be a private, the state investigation office said. On Friday night, Selenskyj announced that he had demoted two SBU brigadier generals. He called them traitors, but gave no precise reasons.

Pentagon hands Ukraine another $300m for arms

The US Department of Defense wants to send Ukraine more weapons worth 300 million dollars (270 million euros). Among other things, the new package should include various drones, missile systems, armored vehicles, ammunition, night vision devices, secure communication systems, machine guns, medical supplies and the provision of commercial satellite images, as the Pentagon announced on Friday evening (local time).

The US government has already pledged $1.65 billion in military aid and arms supplies to Ukraine since Russia’s war of aggression began. Since the beginning of last year, US aid has totaled $2.3 billion.

However, the new weapons deliveries announced by the Pentagon should take a little longer. The process is not about handing over weapons and systems already in US possession, but about orders to the manufacturers. The move “represents the beginning of a process to provide the Ukrainian armed forces with new capabilities,” it said.

At the same time, work will continue with the allies in order to send further arms deliveries to Ukraine. “The United States will continue to use all available means to support Ukrainian forces in the face of the Russian attack,” the Pentagon said. The US Congress passed a budget in March that earmarked $13.6 billion in humanitarian, economic and military aid for Ukraine by the end of September.

According to a media report, the United States and allies also want to deliver Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine. These should strengthen the defense in the Donbass region, writes the New York Times, citing a US official. The tanks were to be taken there soon. The official quoted did not say how many tanks are involved and which country they are from. The US Department of Defense declined to comment, and the US Presidential Office initially declined to comment.

That’s going to be important today

Diplomatic efforts related to the war in Ukraine are expected to continue on Saturday. Top US diplomat Victoria Nuland is coming to Europe to coordinate the response to Russia’s crackdown. Stations of their trip until April 9 should be France, Germany, Turkey, Greece and Cyprus, as the US State Department announced.

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