Evacuated civilians from Mariupol arrive in Bezminna in the Russian proxy area of Donetsk, Ukraine, May 1, 2022 (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)


EA in Daily Express: Ukraine’s Calculations Over Strikes Inside Russia

Sunday’s Coverage: 155 Civilians Leave Besieged Mariupol Steel Plant in Ongoingin Operation


Source: Institute for the Study of War


UPDATE 2028 GMT:

Russia’s latest missile strike on Odesa in southern Ukraine has killed a 15-year-old boy.

The city council said a girl was hospitalized.

Russia has been lobbing missiles at the port city, trying to damage infrastructure and intimidate civilians. It also has damaged two vital bridges connecting Odesa with the rest of Ukraine.

Five people were killed, including a three-month-old girl, in a strike in late April.


UPDATE 1834 GMT:

Finland has terminated a $7.8 billion contract with Russia’s Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant.

Construction of the Hanhikivi 1 project, in which Rosatom has a 34% stake, was planned in 2023 with a completion date of 2029

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Economic Affairs Minister Mika Lintilä repeatedly said it is now “absolutely impossible” for the government to grant the construction permit.


UPDATE 1551 GMT:

The Lysychansk Gymnasium school in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine has been destroyed by Russian shelling.


UPDATE 1548 GMT:

The director of the UN’s World Food Programme in Germany, Martin Frick, says about 4.5m tons of grain at Ukrainian ports cannot be moved because of unsafe or occupied sea routes and inaccessible ports.

See also EA on PTV World: How Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Adds to a Global Food Crisis

Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Adds to Food Shortages in Northwest Syria


UPDATE 1540 GMT:

Ukraine has passed two grim milestones in the Russian invasion.

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Right said more than 3,000 civilians have been killed, with the toll reaching 3,154 after an increase of 254 over the weekend. The actual toll is likely to be far higher, given difficulties in access and corroboration of reports.

The UN High Commission for Refugees said more than 5.5 million people have now left Ukraine.


UPDATE 1225 GMT:

Russia’s Bolshoi has cancelled the productions of two directors who have criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Nureev, a ballet directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, and Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Don Pasquale, directed by Timofey Kulyabin, have been replaced by other performances.

In posts on Instagram, Kulyabin expressed solidarity with Ukraine and mocked Russia’s description of its “special operation”.

Serebrennikov told France 24 last month that the Russian invasion was breaking his heart.

It’s quite obvious that Russia started the war….

It’s war, it’s killing people, it’s the worst thing [that] ever might happen with civilization, with mankind…It’s a humanitarian catastrophe, it’s rivers of blood.

Both directors are currently outside Russia.


UPDATE 1151 GMT:

Russia forces have again struck an important bridge in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine.

The latest attack targeted the bridge across the Dniester estuary, which has already been hit twice. It is the only road and rail link on Ukrainian territory to much of the southern Odesa region.

The bridge is the second near Odesa to be targeted in recent days.


UPDATE 1010 GMT:

Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor, said more civilians have departed on buses on Monday morning.

Andryushchenko said the evacuees were not from the Azovstal steel works.


UPDATE 0833 GMT:

A Ukrainian commander inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol says Russian forces continue to shell the complex, even as about 200 civilians remain and await evacuation.

Denys Shleha, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of the National Guard, said:

As soon as the evacuation of civilians was completed yesterday, the enemy began using all kinds of weapons. The night was restless.

The [Russian] naval artillery worked on Azovstal from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m.. In the morning it became quieter.

Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor, echoed, “Yesterday, as soon as the buses left Azovstal with the evacuees, new shelling began immediately.”

Shleha said there about 20 children among the civilians still sheltering underground.

The commander added:

The biggest problem is wounded servicemen. Our field hospital was bombed a few days ago. Medical care is provided to the military in extremely difficult conditions. There are currently about 500 of them at Azovstal. Their injuries are of varying severity. This is the biggest problem that needs to be resolved….

After the evacuation of civilians and the wounded, it is necessary to resolve issues with the garrison. Our men did everything possible and impossible for the state of the world during these 68 days.


UPDATE 0825 GMT:

A Ukrainian Bayraktar drone destroyed two Russian Raptor-class patrol ships in the Black Sea at dawn on Monday, says Ukraine’s Chief of General Staff Valeriy Zaluzhniy.

Zeluzhniy wrote on Telegram that the patrol ships were struck near Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, a symbol of Ukrainian resistance of the Russian invasion.


UPDATE 0806 GMT:

Russia’s Ambassador to Israel has been summoned to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, in a protest over Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s anti-semitism in comments on Italian TV on Sunday.

Pushing the Kremlin’s disinformation that Nazis control the Ukraine Government, Lavrov said, “President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewishness does not negate his Nazism. Adolf Hitler also had Jewish blood. Wise Jews say that Jews are the worst anti-semites”.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said, “This is an unforgivable and scandalous comment, a terrible historical error and we expect an apolog. Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of anti-Semitism.”


UPDATE 0800 GMT:

Russian shelling on Sunday killed three civilians in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, says governor Serhiy Haidai.

The killings were in the towns of Lysychansk, Popasne, and Zolote. Haidai added that 18 shellings damaged 28 buildings.

In the northeast, three civilians were slain and eight injured in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, wrote Oleh Synyehubov.

In southern Ukraine, two people were killed and four injured by shelling of high-rise buildings in the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, the regional military administration said.


UPDATE 0735 GMT:

Ukraine’s ombudswoman for human rights says Ukrainian prisoners of war taken to Russia were beaten and tortured with freezing temperatures.

Speaking about 14 Ukrainian POWs freed in a prisoner exchange on Friday, Lyudmila Denisova said some had limbs amputated because Russians forced them to wear water-filled boots for days in the freezing conditions.

She said the troops, imprisoned in Kursk in western Russia, were interrogated two or three times a day, beaten severely, and denied medical help. In addition to the amputations, some had severe wounds and sepsis.


UPDATE 0732 GMT:

New Zealand has imposed sanctions on another 170 Russian politicians and six defense companies and organizations.

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said full sanctions are now in place on more than 400 Russian leaders, oligarchs, and their family members, banning them from “carrying out activity in New Zealand, [to] prevent New Zealand from becoming a financial safe haven for those involved with Russia’s illegal activities in Ukraine”.


UPDATE 0715 GMT:

Russian forces have stolen farm equipment worth almost $5 million — but cannot use it because the 27 pieces of machinery are locked.

Troops took the machinery, including combine harvesters, from a John Deere dealership in occupied Melitopol in southern Ukraine over a period of weeks.

A source in Melitopol told CNN that some equipment was taken to a nearby village, and other machinery transported almost 700 miles away to a farm outside Grozny in Chechnya.

The source said, “When the invaders drove the stolen harvesters to Chechnya, they realised that they could not even turn them on, because the harvesters were locked remotely.”


UPDATE 0646 GMT:

Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, visited front-line positions in eastern Ukraine late last week to “change the course” of the troubled Russian invasion, according to senior Ukrainian and US officials.

The Chief of the General Staff visited Izyum in northeast Ukraine, the staging point for the Russian offensive trying to seize territory in the Donbas.

A “senior Ukrainian official” said Ukraine’s forces, having learned of the visit, targeted the military headquarters — a converted school — where he was meeting officers. They just missed him but an attack killed at least 200 Russian troops, including at least one general.


UPDATE 0638 GMT:

Oleg Tinkov, the founder of one of Russia’s biggest banks, has told The New York Times from an undisclosed location:

I’ve realized that Russia, as a country, no longer exists. I believed that the Putin regime was bad. But of course, I had no idea that it would take on such catastrophic scale.

Last month Tinkov, who launched the Tinkoff bank, said 90% of Russians were “against this war”, with Russia fielding a “shit army” in its invasion: “And how will the army be good, if everything else in the country is shit and mired in nepotism, sycophancy and servility?”.

He told the Times that many in the business and government elite have privately agreed with him, “but they are all afraid”.

Tinkov said he now fears for his life, having been forced by the Kremlin to sell his 35% stake in Tinkoff to a Russian mining billionaire for a fraction of its worth: “It was like a hostage – you take what you are offered.”


UPDATE 0627 GMT:

UK military intelligence assesses this morning that more than 25% of Russia’s invasion force has been knocked off the battlefield.

At the start of the conflict, Russia committed over 120 battalion tactical groups, approximately 65% of its entire ground combat strength.

It is likely that more than a quarter of these units have now been rendered combat ineffective.

Some of Russia’s most elite units, including the VDV Airborne Forces, have suffered the highest levels of attrition. It will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces.


ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukrainian officials are hoping for more civilian evacuations from besieged Mariupol in southern Ukraine today, after about 180 people were moved on Sunday to either Ukrainian or Russian proxy areas.

Zelenskiy announced the departure of 100 civilians from the shelter under the Azovstal steel works, the main site of Ukraine’s resistance in the city on the Sea of Azov. He said they will arrive in Zaporizhzhia, 132 miles to the northwest, on Monday.

The President added that another evacuation is scheduled for 8 a.m. today.

Earlier on Sunday, about 80 civilians arrived in Beziminne in the Russian proxy area of the Donetsk region. They were transported in buses with Red Cross logos, escorted by Russian forces and vehicles with UN logos.

A UN spokesperson confirmed that evacuations were underway. Details are not being given to ensure the security of the operation.

Up to 1,000 civilians had been trapped for weeks in the Azovstal works by Russian attacks and siege. Vladimir Putin had refused any evacuations, as well as aid to the complex, until Ukrainian defenders surrendered.

See also Ukraine War, Day 54: Mariupol’s Defenders Ignore Russian “Surrender or Die” Ultimatum

“We Didn’t See the Sun for So Long”

Natalia Usmanova, 37, who reached Beziminne on Sunday, spoke of the Russian bombing of Mariupol during its siege of more than nine weeks:

You just can’t imagine what we have been through — the terror. I lived there, worked there all my life, but what we saw there was just terrible.

I feared that the bunker would not withstand it – I had terrible fear. When the bunker started to shake, I was hysterical, my husband can vouch for that. I was so worried the bunker would cave in.

She said of life in the Azovstal shelter, “We didn’t see the sun for so long,” recalling the fear and lack of oxygen.

Up to 100,000 civilians are still in Mariupol. Until Sunday, Russian forces had blocked any organized evacuations, firing on convoys and turning back a Red Cross attempt. Hundreds of thousands of residents, risking Russian fires, have escaped in private vehicles.