Steelworks in Mariupol under attack again

Kyiv, Moscow According to information from Kyiv, Russian troops have again fired on numerous targets in Ukraine. Attacks were reported both from the Donbass region and from the largely destroyed port city of Mariupol.

“In the direction of Donetsk, the enemy is carrying out offensive operations along the entire front line,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Saturday. The strongest Russian attacks are aimed at the city of Sievjerodonetsk in the Luhansk region. In addition, the General Staff reports that storming attempts in Rubischne, Popasna and Marjinka have been fended off.

The Russian army has resumed attacks on the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, sources said. “The enemy is trying to smother the last resistance of the Mariupol defenders,” said presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych in a video message.

Artillery and air force would be used. The Ukrainian soldiers would hold their positions and “even launch counterattacks”. The information is not independently verifiable. At 12:00 p.m. local time (11:00 a.m. CEST) a ceasefire was to start for the evacuation of remaining civilians from the largely destroyed city of once 440,000 people. There was initially no information on this.

In the past few days there have been repeated attempts to evacuate civilians. But this failed several times. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of being responsible.

According to British intelligence services, heavy fighting continues despite Russian claims that Mariupol has been completely taken. These slowed down the further advance in the Donbass that Russia was aiming for, according to the daily update of the British Ministry of Defense on Saturday. In the past 24 hours, Russia has not made any significant progress as Ukrainian resistance is thwarting it.

Satellite images are said to show other possible graves near Mariupol

Not far from the south-east Ukrainian port of Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian troops, satellite images indicate another possible mass grave. “This time in the left-bank district near the Vynohradne cemetery,” city council deputy Petro Andryushchenko told Telegram on Friday. The occupying forces would try to cover up war crimes.

The images distributed by the US satellite photo service Maxar from March 22 to April 15 are said to show a cemetery near Wynohradne before, during and after an expansion of the graves. The information cannot be independently verified.

According to Ukrainian information, an evacuation from the heavily damaged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol could take place on Saturday. This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Irina Wereschuk on Facebook late Friday evening. She went on to say that escape corridors out of the city had failed several times and that she understood how difficult this was for people. “But you and I have to try so many times until it works.”

Russian forces said they destroyed more than 20 Ukraine ammunition depots. Air-launched missiles and the tactical air force each destroyed 3 depots, while the missile forces destroyed another 16 ammunition depots, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. The reports cannot be verified independently.

A total of 66 Ukrainian military targets were hit by the air force and as many as 1,098 targets by rocket forces and artillery. According to local authorities, the port city of Odessa has also been the target of a rocket attack. The infrastructure was hit, it says in a brief statement.

Russia wants to put new ICBMs into service from autumn

Meanwhile, the Russian armed forces have announced that they will put their new Sarmat ICBM into service in the fall. It is now a matter of bringing the missile tests to a reasonable conclusion, regulating the ranges and then handing over the Sarmat (Nato code name: SS-X-30 Satan 2) to the military, said the head of the Roscosmos space agency, Dmitri Rogozin, in a television interview. “We plan to do this no later than in the fall.”

On Wednesday, Russia carried out a test launch of the ICBM at the Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia. Against the background of the war against Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin used the rocket launch to threaten the West. The weapon can overcome all forms of anti-missile defenses and “makes people think twice who, in the fervor of hardened, aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country,” he said.

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The Russian leadership accused the US on Saturday of a planned provocation to foist on Russia to use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. “The staging of the use of weapons of mass destruction serves to accuse Russia of using banned weapons in order to then implement the so-called “Syrian scenario”, in which the state in question is economically and politically isolated and also excluded from international organizations such as the UN Security Council will,” said the head of the NBC protection troops, Igor Kirillov.Medvedev: Europe “does not survive a week” without Russian gas

Ex-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has responded to a guideline from the EU Commission that it appears EU companies could pay for Russian gas without violating sanctions. We appreciate the “consistency and loyalty to principles of the European partners,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram on Saturday night, adding a laughing smiley face and a clown emoji.

Especially when you consider that, according to current data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Europe can get by without Russian gas for a maximum of six months. “But seriously, they won’t last a week.”

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