A victim, hand bounds behind his back, killed by Russian troops lies in the street in Bucha, Ukraine, April 3, 2022 (Reuters)
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Saturday’s Coverage: Biden-Scholz Meeting — “We Will Do This For As Long As It Takes”
Map: Institute for the Study of War
UPDATE 1433 GMT:
Russian mortar shelling has killed a women and two children in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
Presidential Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak said a residential house in the village of Poniativka was hit: “Russian terrorists continue to kill civilians.”
UPDATE 1103 GMT:
UK military intelligence assesses that Russia is short of munitions in its nine-month effort to overrun Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
The analysts point to an increase in “close combat”, such as mobilized reservists — armed with only “firearms and shovels” in “brutal and low-tech fighting” — being ordered to assault a Ukrainian concrete strong point.
One reservist described being “neither physically nor psychologically” prepared for that type of assault.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War analyzes that Russian forces “appear to have secured a sufficient positional advantage to conduct a turning movement against certain parts of Bakhmut”.
However, the Russians “have not yet forced Ukrainian forces to withdraw and will likely not be able to encircle the city soon”.
Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, said on Saturday that the situation was “difficult but under control”.
Deputy Mayor Oleksandr Marchenko said daily evacuations of civilians have dropped to 5 to 10, compared with up to 600 at the peak of departures.
The enemy blows everything to the ground, strikes at multi-story buildings, and the residential sector. There are air raids, artillery shelling, mortar shelling. The enemy is striking the city with everything they can.
There is no way we can get there.
About 4,000 to 4,500 civilians are still in the city. Only four medical workers remain.
UPDATE 0844 GMT:
Ukraine First Lady Olena Zelenska says the Prosecutor General’s office is investigating 171 cases of sexual violence committed by Russian military personnel against Ukrainian citizens.
Zelensky told the United for Justice conference in Lviv:
Behind this figure is not only women. Among the victims were 39 men, 13 minors, among them a boy.
The main thing is that we know about these cases only because these people found the strength to speak. How many suffer in silence, especially in the occupied territories, we do not know.
At the end of January, the Prosecutor General’s office said it had recorded 155 cases of sexual violence. There were 65 cases in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine and 52 in the Kyiv region.
The UN reported last September that the victims ranged in age from 4 to 82.
UPDATE 0837 GMT:
As Russia tries to overrun Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, its latest shelling has killed two civilians and injured seven.
UPDATE 0831 GMT:
Two Ukrainian pilots have arrived at a military base in Tucson, Arizona to undergo “familiarization” training on the F-16 fighter jet.
A US military official said, “This event allows us to better help Ukrainian pilots become more effective pilots and better advise them on how to develop their own capabilities. The pilots will not be flying any platforms during this event but they will be using a simulator during portions of their visit.”
The official said there are no updates on US supply of F-16s to Ukraine and no immediate plans to increase the number of Ukrainian pilots in the US.
President Joe Biden has continued to push back Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request for F-16s, saying that “he needs tanks, he needs artillery, he needs air defense”.
UPDATE 0819 GMT:
Moscow authories have announced a competition for families of mobilized men to receive food kits and “gift tea sets with sweets”.
The city government has ordered 800 food kits and 320 tea sets.
Winners of the food kits will receive 300 grams of ham; 200 grams of lightly salted trout; 200 grams of chocolates; 100 grams of black tea; 180 grams of hard cheese; 95 grams of instant coffee.
The tea sets include 100 grams of black tea with thyme; 95 grams of instant coffee in glass packaging; 380 grams of honey cake; 250 grams of marshmallows in chocolate; and 345 grams of cookies with different fillings.
UPDATE 0811 GMT:
Russia has lost more than 200,000 killed or wounded troops in its invasion of Ukraine, says Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander of NATO’s joint forces in Europe.
More than 1,800 of the casualties are officers.
Cavoli said more than 2,000 Russian main battle tanks have been destroyed or abandoned.
The Ukraine military says more than 150,000 Russian soldiers have been slain.
UPDATE 0752 GMT:
The death toll has risen to 13, including an 8-month-old baby, from Russia’s missile destruction of an apartment block in Zaporizhzhia city in southern Ukraine on Thursday.
Two more bodies were discovered late Saturday. Five people are still missing, and four are in hospital.
Emergency services initially reported five deaths, with 15 people missing.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Senior officials from countries in Europe and North America have agreed on international prosecution of Russia’s crimes in its invasion of Ukraine.
After meetings in Lviv in western Ukraine, the prosecutors confirmed the establishment of the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Russia’s Aggression. The center, based in The Hague in the Netherlands will begin its work this summer.
Ukraine Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin announced:
Today we signed an additional agreement to that on the Joint Investigative Team, which provides for the establishment in The Hague…of the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Russia’s Aggression against Ukraine.
He noted the Center is the first step towards a special tribunal to try Russian political and military figures for the crimes of aggression during the invasion.
Making an unexpected trip to Lviv, US Attorney General Merrick Garland told the conference:
We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly, and with one voice: the perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them.
Thirty years ago, at the dedication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the late Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel issued a charge: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
For the past year, our colleagues in the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office have risked their lives to bear witness.
Russian troops have carried out a series of mass killings of civilians, including in areas near Kyiv such as Bucha. Russian missiles, bombing, and shelling has killed thousands of civilians. Hundreds of thousands of Ukraine, many of them children, have been forcibly deported to Russia.
Last March 25, a month after the start of the invasion, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) supported Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland in the creation of the Joint Investigation Team.
Last month, during her visit to Kyiv, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed with Ukrainian officials on the extension of the JIT through the pursuit of the International Center.
