There was a marker on a mass grave that said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
There was a marker on a mass grave that said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukrainian authorities have found a mass burial site near the recently recaptured northeastern city previously occupied by Russian forces.
“A mass grave of people was found in Izium, Kharkiv region. Necessary processes have already started there. More information – clear, verifiable information – should be available tomorrow,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly televised address.
The Associated Press Journalists visited the site in a forest outside Izium on Thursday. A mass grave had a marker saying it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. It was surrounded by hundreds of individual graves and only crosses to mark them. President Zelensky worked Thursday to add political momentum to Ukraine’s recent military gains against Russia, while missile strikes caused flooding near his hometown, Moscow’s determination to reclaim battlefield advantage. performed.
A week after Ukraine’s counter-offensive forced Russian troops to withdraw from the northeast, Mr. Zelensky met with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen during his third wartime visit to Kyiv. Ms von der Leyen publicly expressed wholehearted support of the 27-nation bloc and wore a dress in Ukraine’s national colours.
“It is absolutely important and necessary for Ukraine to support Ukraine with the necessary military equipment to defend itself. And they have proven that if they are well equipped, they are capable of doing this,” she said.
Air raid sirens sounded twice in Kyiv during von der Leyen’s meeting with Mr Zelensky, a reminder that Russia has long-range weapons that can reach any location in Ukraine, even if in recent weeks The capital was attacked.
Ukrainian officials said Russian missiles struck a reservoir dam near Mr Zelensky’s birthplace and the largest city in central Ukraine, Krivy Rih, late Wednesday, flooding more than 100 homes. Russian military bloggers alleged that the attack was intended to flood low-lying areas where Ukrainian forces had infiltrated as part of their counter-offensive.
The head of the local government reported a new attack on the dam on Thursday and said emergency teams were working to avoid excess water.
The first attack so close to its roots angered Zelensky, who said the attacks had no military value.
“In fact, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians is another reason for Russia to lose,” he said.
UNGA says it will make exception for Volodymyr Zelensky’s address
The UN General Assembly said it would vote whether to make a procedural exception that would allow Mr Zelensky to deliver a pre-recorded speech at a meeting of world leaders next week.
In a document proposed to be voted on Friday, the 193-member body expressed concern that leaders of “peaceful sovereign states” may not participate in person “for reasons beyond their control due to ongoing foreign aggression, aggression, military hostilities”. Do not allow safe departure and return to their countries, or be required to discharge their national defense and security duties and functions.” On Thursday, the United Nations nuclear agency’s 35-nation board of governors passed a resolution in which Moscow called on Ukraine to immediately end its occupation of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant. Fears of a potential radiation disaster have engulfed the power station, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, as Russia and Ukraine overhauled the plant over the past weeks. and had accused each other of shelling in the surrounding areas.
The document, which expressed a clearly harsher tone than previous statements from IAEA officials, passed by 26 votes. Russia and Beijing voted against it, while seven Asian and African countries abstained.
The resolution calls on Russia to return control of the plant to Ukraine and “against the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant and any other nuclear facility in Ukraine, and to cease all operations immediately.”
As Mr. Zelensky greets colleagues with optimism from last week’s events, Russian President Vladimir Putin meets face-to-face with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a regional security summit in Uzbekistan,
Mr. Xi’s government, which said it had a “no-border” friendship with Moscow before the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, has refused to criticize Russia’s military actions. At the start of his talks on Thursday, Mr Putin thanked Xi and said he was ready to discuss unspecified “concerns” by China about Ukraine.
“We greatly appreciate the well-balanced position of our Chinese friends with regard to the Ukrainian crisis,” Mr. Putin said, facing Mr. Xi at a long table.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi’s formal meeting on the sidelines of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance created as a countermeasure to US influence, provides a comparison to Mr. Zelensky’s encounter with the chairman of the EU’s executive commission.
EU Parliament completes process for a €5 billion preferential loan to Ukraine
The EU parliament on Thursday completed the process of approving a €5 billion preferential loan to Ukraine, which is part of a €9 billion aid package to cover the cost of the war. Mr Zelensky stressed the need to provide more weapons to his allies, saying the only way to guarantee the security of Ukrainians is to “lock the skies” on the country with Western-supplied air defense systems provided by Western allies.
Germany, the European Union’s economic powerhouse, announced on Thursday that it will send two additional MARS II multiple launch rocket systems, as well as 50 DINGO armored vehicles, to Ukraine.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock was pressuring Chancellor Olaf Scholz to decide whether to supply advanced tanks to Ukraine sooner, while its counter-offensive gained traction.
“In the decisive phase that Ukraine currently finds itself in, I also do not believe that this is a decision that can be delayed for long,” said Ms Beerbock.
In memory of the suffering already caused by the war, a volunteer Ukrainian medic captured in Ukraine’s besieged port city of Mariupol on Thursday told US lawmakers about nursing fellow detainees as they succumbed to torture and untreated wounds .
Ukrainian Yulia Pyevska, who was detained by pro-Russian forces in March and held for three months at transfer locations in Ukraine’s Donetsk region to Russian-allied territory, spoke to lawmakers with the Security and Cooperation Commission in Europe Key, which is known as Helsinki. commission.
Piewska, giving the most detailed public account of his time in captivity, described “inmates screaming for weeks in cells, and then dying of torture without any medical assistance”. She continued, “Then in this torment of hell, the only thing they feel before death is abuse and extra beating.”