Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (R) hosts UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Kyiv, April 9, 2021

EA on PTV World: Dismantling Russia’s Disinformation Over Its War Crimes in Ukraine

Saturday’s Coverage: Russia’s “Murderous Deliberate Slaughter” at Kramatorsk Railway Station

UPDATE 1625 GMT:

Health worker Alina Buzunar has described the Russian takeover of a hospital in besieged Mariupol last month.

Staff heard gunshots as they sheltered in the basement on March 11 or 12, Buzunar said.

Russian soldiers said: “Lie down on the floor or we will start throwing grenades at you,’ and that’s when they came into the hospital.”

They talked to the management, who asked them not to interfere with the work of the hospital. The main thing they asked of us was not to leave. They said that anyone who did would be shot.

Buzunar also described the aftermath of the Russian shelling of Mariupol’s children hospital and maternity ward.

She took a man to the morgue to identify the body of his slain wife: “He was absolutely calm until he found her. Because he told us that until the last, he hoped it was not her. Then he cried a lot, it was a very sad situation.”

UPDATE 1425 GMT:

Russian forces have again struck the destroyed airport in Dnipro in east-central Ukraine.

The head of the regional administration, Valentyn Reznichenko said, “And one more attack on the airport in Dnipro. There is nothing left of it already. The airport and the infrastructure nearby have been destroyed. But rockets keep flying.”

He said information about casualties is being established.

On March 15, a Russian strike took out the runway and damaged a terminal building.

Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko tweeted:

UPDATE 1305 GMT:

Observers and the Ukraine Government note the significance of President Zelenskiy and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson walking through the streets of Kyiv, weeks after Russian troops bombarded and threatened to occupy the capital.

UPDATE 1255 GMT:

The Ukraine State agency for the Chernobyl nuclear zone says occupying Russian troops stole 133 radioactive materials from the storage area of the Ecocentre research base.

The agency warned, “Even a small part of this activity is deadly if handled unprofessionally.”

On Friday, Ukraine Energy Minister German Gulashchenko said, after a visit to the exclusion zone, that Russian troops exposed themselves to “shocking” levels of radiation: “They dug bare soil contaminated with radiation, collected radioactive sand in bags for fortification, breathed this dust.”

Gulashenko predicted that some troops may only have a year to live because of the exposure.

UPDATE 0735 GMT:

A survivor of the Russian strike on the Mariupol Drama Theater on March 16, which buried hundreds of sheltering civilians, has spoken to the New York Times.

Viktoria Dubovitskaya recalled a deafening and blinding explosions, collapsing the walls: “The moments afterwards felt like an eternity, waiting to hear my child’s scream so I would know she was alive….Maybe she will be without legs or arms, but just let her be alive.”

A wall fell onto one of her two children, 2-year-old Nastya. For moments, she did not know if her daughter had survived. Then Nastya screamed, “Mama!”: a propped-up mattress had cushioned her from the blow.

Dubovitskaya, who was on the second floor of the theater, recalled:

When we walked downstairs, we just saw dead bodies. So many bodies. The whole place was covered in blood.

We knew that another strike could happen, or that Russian soldiers might come for a zachistka (cleansing) of the city. We just ran.

UPDATE 0726 GMT:

Satellite images confirm hundreds of Russian military vehicles, in an eight-mile convoy, moving on Friday moving toward the city of Izyum in east Ukraine.

Russian forces seized Izyum last week and appear to be using it as a staging ground for a push towards the key city of Sloviansk.

UPDATE 0658 GMT:

Following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s trip to Kyiv, the UK says it will provide another 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems to Ukraine.

UPDATE 0655 GMT:

Dozens of Ukrainian civilians has been found in a mass grave in Buzova, near Kyiv.

Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community including Buzova and several other villages, said the bodies were found in a ditch near a petrol station.

UPDATE 0647 GMT:

Another Russian commander has reportedly been killed.

Visegrád 24 says Col. Alexander Bespalov, the commander of the 59th Guards Tank Regiment, was slain in battle. His funeral was on Friday in the Russian city of Ozersk.

UPDATE 0630 GMT:

Survivors speak of Russia’s missile attack that killed at least 52 civilians in the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine on Friday.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Saying “we do not have time to wait”, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pressed the international community — particularly European countries — to embargo imports of Russian oil.

Zelenskiy spoke after a busy 48 hours of diplomacy in Kyiv, beginning with meetings with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Union foreign policy head Josep Borrell and culminating with a visit by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“Oil is one of the two sources of Russian self-confidence, their sense of impunity,” Zelenskiy emphasized.

The US pledged last month to end all imports of Russian oil, gas, and coal. The UK has committed to halt oil purchases by the end of 2022. Poland and the Baltic States have also made commitments; however, other European Union countries are still considering the situation.

On Friday, standing alongside Johnson in London, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany will stop using Russian coal by the summer and oil by the end of 2022.

Significantly, Zelenskiy did not refer to a halt to imports of Russian gas in his statement last night. With their dependence on Russian imports, European countries have been hesitant to set a timetable for reduction and cutoff, and supplies have remained at about the same level as before the Russian invasion on February 24.

Scholz did not back up Johnson’s claim that Germany will stop importing Russian gas by the middle of 2024. He said only that goal will be achieved “very soon”.

As attention shift to eastern Ukraine after the Russian withdrawal from much of the north, Zelenskiy said Ukrainians are ready for any offensive.

This will be a hard battle; we believe in this fight and our vi

The Ukraine military said it thwarted eight Russian attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Saturday. It claimed the destruction of four tanks, eight other armoured vehicles, and 13 air targets including three aircraft, one helicopter, five UAVs, and four winged missiles.

Following Russia’s mass killing of at least 52 civilians in Friday’s missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station, five more people were slain in shelling on Saturday, according to the governor of the Donetsk region.

A school and a high-rise apartment building were shelled in the city of Sievierodonetsk in the Luhansk region on Sunday morning. Several apartments were burned out and residents were evacuated.

Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Gardai says residents must evacuate because of the Russian bombardment and the possibility of a ground offensive. He said about 30% of residents remain in the region’s cities, towns, and villages despite instructions since Wednesday to leave.

Russian forces prevented buses from evacuating civilians in three eastern cities on Saturday, breaching an agreement brokered by the Red Cross. More than 4,000 people were evacuated through other corridors.