Damage in Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine from Russian missile strikes, April 9, 2023 (Reuters)

Sunday’s Coverage: Russia Has Lost 10,000+ Armored Vehicles and Equipment

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1551 GMT:

Ukraine and Russia have exchanged more than 200 prisoners of war.

Ukraine Presidential Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak said, “We are returning home 100 of our people – soldiers, sailors, border guards, national guardsmen. Among them are defenders of Mariupol, Azovstal, Hostomel.”

He said that some returnees were “seriously injured and have diseases”: “We will do everything necessary so that each of them receives all the necessary help.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said 106 Russian prisoners of war had been released.

UPDATE 1445 GMT:

Meeting Indian officials in New Delhi, Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova said she wants India to help resolve Russia’s invasion “to a great extent”.

Dzhaparova’s Monday-Thursday visit is the first time a Ukrainian minister has travelled to India during the invasion. She is expected to hold talks with officials from India’s Ministry of External Affairs and with Deputy National Security Advisor Vikram Misri.

Dzhaparova said on Indian TV that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is seeking a conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi:

We believe intensification of political dialogue on the highest level is first step towards this big goal. My president is requesting a phone conversation with the prime minister. We are looking forward to welcome him in Kyiv one day.

She expressed Ukraine’s hope that India, as the rotating president of the G20, will invite’s Kyiv officials to participate in events.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russia’s forces marked Orthodox Christianity’s Palm Sunday weekend with deadly attacks across Ukraine.

Russian shelling killed at least seven civilians this weekend, with casualties in Kupyansk in eastern Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia city in the south.

The victims in Zaporizhzhia included a 10-year-old girl, slain where her home was destroyed. Two people were injured, one critically. At least a dozen nearby buildings were damaged.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly address to the nation:

They hit a house, an apartment building. Three people were inside. A man, a woman and a child — a girl, her name was Iryna, she would have turned 11 this year. She died. The man died too….The woman is in critical condition in the hospital….

This is how the terrorist state spends this Palm Sunday. This is how Russia puts itself in even greater isolation from the world, from humanity.

The President continued with a message of hope:

Every bright Christian holiday teaches us that we may not know how, but we must be sure that evil will lose. We have to believe. And we believe.

We must bring the defeat of evil closer. And we are bringing it closer. And the world stands with us.

Russia’s Medvedev: Ukraine “Will Cease to Exist”

In contrast, Dmitry Medvedev — Russia’s former President and the current Deputy Secretary of the State Security Council — marked the weekend by saying that Ukraine will “cease to exist because nobody needs it”.

Medvedev posted a six-part screed on social media on Saturday. It was effectively endorsed by Russia’s leadership with publication on State outlet TASS.

Medvedev railed that putting “young Ukrainian blood-sucking parasites on the arthritic neck of the decrepit EU” will be the final downfall of the “previously royal, but now impoverished due to degeneration, Europe”.

He continued the attempt to split public opinion in Europe with the declaration that the “forced support of the Nazi regime under command of the American mentor has already created true financial and political hell for the Europeans”. Ironically, given Russia’s invasion to overrun its neighbor, he accused Poland of floating the idea of seizure of western Ukraine.

Medvedev also targeted the US public, encouraging it to reject the Biden Administration’s support of “a country unknown to them”. He raised the prospect of civil unrest: the “2021 storming of the Capitol will look like Boy Scout games in comparison”.

He concluded with the endorsement of Vladimir Putin’s pursuit of the dissolution of Ukraine and a “Greater Russia”.

this is why this sub-Ukraine is not needed for us. We need a Big Great Russia….

This kind of Ukraine is not needed to anyone on the planet. And this is why it will cease to exist.