UKRAINE WAR. Sunday March 13, Kiev is surrounded. The Ukrainian capital is more than ever threatened. To the west, a military base on the Polish border was bombed. An initial assessment reported nine dead and 57 injured.
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11:24 – 85 children have been killed since the start of the war
This Sunday, March 13, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, unveiled a new human toll from the war in Ukraine. She said that 85 children have been killed since the start of the war. According to her, “369 schools were damaged by the bombardments, including 57 completely destroyed”.
10:49 – A second Ukrainian mayor kidnapped
The mayor of Dniprorudne, a city occupied by the Russians, has been kidnapped. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Yevhen Matviiv is the second mayor to be kidnapped by the Russian occupier. “War crimes are becoming systemic,” Zaporizhzhia Oblast Governor Olexandr Starukh said.
10:00 – The situation in Ukraine at 10 a.m.
Situation update in Ukraine :
- Kiev is increasingly surrounded. The Ukrainian capital braces as the Russians seem to have changed their strategy there, scattering their tanks as if to encircle the Ukrainian capital. Only the roads to the south remain clear. On the spot, many Ukrainian soldiers are ready and food reserves are made up in order to resist in the event of a blockade.
- To the west, in the Lviv region near the Polish border, a military base was bombed. “The occupiers carried out an airstrike on the International Peacekeeping and Security Center. According to preliminary information, they fired eight missiles. Information on (potential) casualties is being gathered “, the Lviv regional administration said in a statement. An initial assessment reported nine dead and 57 injured.
- The evacuation of residents of Izium in the Kharkiv region was interrupted by heavy fighting between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers in the humanitarian corridor. According to a municipal official, the city is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster, civilians are deprived of water, food, heating and electricity.
- The situation is also critical in Mariupol (south-east) and Chernihiv (north-east of Kiev). Many civilians would be “besieged” according to the boss of the Swiss branch of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the first, while Chernihiv would be on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. In addition to suffering attacks, many civilians would now be deprived of heating. On the spot, it would also be impossible to bury the dead. While earlier in the day many national and international media announced that the mosque of Mariupol had been the target of a Russian bombardment, the president of the Association of the Suleiman mosque of Mariupol, Ismail Hacioglu, joined by the Turkish chain HaberTürk, denied this information: “The Russians are bombarding the area which is 2 km from the mosque, and a bomb fell at a distance of 700 m from the mosque.”
- In Kharkiv, a Russian bombardment hit an establishment housing 330 disabled people, 73 of them were evacuated according to the state emergency services which do not report any deaths for the moment. Regional administration chief Oleg Sinegoubov slams Moscow’s attack on civilians: “It’s a war crime against civilians, a genocide of the Ukrainian nation!”
- The Russian army attacked the humanitarian corridor of Mariupol, a port city in southern Ukraine besieged by Moscow, preventing supplies and especially the evacuation of civilians. Volodymyr Zelensky denounces this Russian offensive. “The Russian troops did not cease fire. […] The occupiers launched a tank attack exactly where this corridor was supposed to pass,” he said.
- In the west and north-west of Ukraine, the military bases of Ivano-Frankivsk and Loutsk were targeted by Russian bombardments and “decommissioned” according to the Russian Defense Minister. Four Ukrainian soldiers lost their lives there.
- The city of Mykolaiv, the last rampart before Odessa in the south-west of the country, is also the victim of intense bombardments.
- Daria Kaleniuk, Ukrainian anti-corruption activist, said on her Twitter account that 200 people gathered in Melitopol. They demonstrated to obtain the release of their mayor. As a reminder, Ivan Fedorov, mayor of Melitopol, was kidnapped this Friday, March 11 by the Russians.
- In a statement, Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom said officials from Russian nuclear giant Rosatom are at the site of the Zaporije nuclear power plant to check the level of radiation. as a reminder, Zaporije was bombed on March 4th. The plant has since been occupied by the Russians.
Balance sheet of the war in Ukraine :
- More than 2.5 million people have left Ukraine since the start of the war, said UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi. Another two million people have reportedly been evacuated to Ukrainian towns spared from the fighting.
- The Ukrainian Human Rights Office, a body belonging to the UN, draws up a balance sheet of “549 people killed, including 41 children [et] 957 injured, including 52 children” between February 24 and March 9. But according to the organization, the figures are “considerably higher”.
- According to Ukraine, more than 12,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the war. A balance sheet which could however prove to be extremely inflated.
- Russia, for its part, did not give a new assessment. The latest, dated Wednesday March 2, announced the death of 498 soldiers and 1,597 wounded.
Latest major news :
- This Saturday, March 12, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Belarus, Vikto Goulevitch, declared that his country would not take part in the conflict in Ukraine. His country will still send five tactical battalion troops to the border as part of the rotation of forces there.
- In a video posted on his Facebook account, President Volodymyr Zelensky explained that the losses are enormous on the Russian side: “Our armed forces are doing everything to deprive the enemy of any will to continue the war against Ukraine. losses of the Russian troops are enormous.The dynamics of the losses of the occupiers on the 17th day are such that it is safe to say that this is the biggest blow to the Russian army in decades. lost more than that number of days.”
- Joe Biden announced a new round of sanctions against Russia on Friday, including an embargo on certain Russian products, such as vodka and diamonds. The American president has also pledged to “avoid” a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, because according to him, this would cause “World War III”.
- During a press conference, Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the development of negotiations between Russians and Ukrainians. According to the Ukrainian president, Moscow would no longer issue an ultimatum but discuss, which is “a fundamentally different approach”.
- In a statement, Emmanuel Macron said he had demanded from Vladimir Putin on the telephone that he end the siege of the city of Mariupol, a city in southern Ukraine where the situation is “humanly unsustainable”. As a reminder, the Red Cross considers that the situation on site is “extremely complicated”.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an initial human toll. According to him, since the start of the war 16 days ago, “some 1,300 servicemen have died in our country, and more than 12,000 in Russia. One for ten.” And the president added: “I am not happy that 12,000 of them are dead”, recalling that most Russian soldiers do not even know why they are engaged in this conflict.
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After weeks of lying poker and an escalation not officially declared in recent days, Russia has therefore announced that it will go to war with Ukraine on Thursday, February 24, 2022. In a televised speech published early Thursday, Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” to “protect people who have been intimidated for eight years by the Kiev regime”. The Russian president’s decision comes after the latter recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, territories established in Ukraine but ruled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014. “Treaties of friendship and mutual aid” had been signed on February 22 between Russia and these territories in the east of the country, paving the way for a military intervention by Russia, to which Vladimir Putin has therefore committed.
If for several years, tensions have been high in the separatist regions of Ukraine, where the conflict escalated in the days preceding the Russian invasion of February 24, war was finally declared throughout the country. Although Russia borders only to the east of Ukraine, it is all the main cities of the country, everywhere on the territory, which are under the bombings and armed raids. Starting with the capital Kiev, and its surroundings, attacked by Russian forces. Yet located several hundred kilometers from the Russian border, the country’s first city is only 150 km by road from Belarus, a country friendly to Russia through which Vladimir Putin’s forces entered Ukraine. .
Southern Ukraine and the shores of the Black Sea are the scene of fierce fighting between Russians and Ukrainians. The Soviet army got the better of the towns of Kherson and Berdiansk, it is in a position of strength along the entire coast as far west as Odessa, where an assault by the Russian navy is preparing. In the southeast, Mariupol is the last city to resist and to block the junction between the conquered territories of Donbass and the Russian advance in the south of the country. To the north and east the Kremlin soldiers are advancing and striking at Chernihiv and Kharkiv in addition to Donetsk and Lugansk, which have been concentrating tensions for eight years and the beginning of the war in Donbass. Western Ukraine was spared despite isolated attacks and bombardments near Poland, in Lutsk, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk.