A total of 160 people were killed in Lviv in a single attack. According to a Brazilian volunteer, most of them were professional soldiers who had come to Ukraine voluntarily to support the Ukrainians. They were all housed in a building. The morgues are overflowing with corpses and now, in addition to the bombs, the problem, given the lack of water, is the epidemiological question.
According to the Brazilian witness, the military volunteers were American, Canadian, French, Brazilian and British. Lack of interest and poor weapons. The Times published an article by a war veteran who escaped from Ukraine after nine hours. The chaos is total.
Journalist and writer Vladlen Tatarsky writes: ‘Today our troops (DPR) stormed Mariupol from the west. Heavy fighting is going on almost already near the city centre’. The blogger a few hours earlier had shared an exclusive scheduled for his daily edition of the Evening Vladlen Telegram channel with the Our Time programme on Radio Russia: “Today our (DPR) troops stormed Mariupol from the west. Heavy fighting is going on almost already near the city centre…. Two or three bus stops from the centre”. According to him, ‘heavy fighting is also going on in the Azovstal area and very soon the city will be divided into separate pockets of resistance and the enemy will be completely defeated’.
According to local sources, a number of neighbourhoods to the west of Mariupol (17th, 16th, with a high probability 21st, 22nd, 23rd in the north and others have also come under the control of the Russian Armed Forces and the DNR NM): ‘Russian Z-vehicles have taken hold near the Savona cinema and the Police Academy. It seems that an important target will be a mail bridge, cutting through which will be able to interrupt the communication between the terrorists entrenched in Azovstal and the central part of the city. At that point it will only be a matter of time”.
On the Kiev side Russian artillerymen are hitting the positions of the Ukrainian armed forces in Moshchun, but their progress is slowed down because of the powerful fortification prepared during the “Great Patriotic War” (World War II). While the Russian paratroopers who arrived in these days are near the first line, or otherwise called the defensive line, which runs exactly along the eastern bank of the Irpen river.
According to some Russian military analysts Putin has conceived the action in Ukraine in four moves: from Belgord to south Crimea. Objective: Dnepropetrovsk, two or three weeks of battles; second: blockade Odessa through navy and air force: two weeks; third occupy Cherkasy territories from north east and west with air support three weeks; Kiev attack from south from Vinnytsia and Trasnistria needed air support. The fighting over Kiev could last up to three months.
The people fleeing yesterday were able to take advantage of the humanitarian corridors, while US tanks that have already passed through Germany are arriving in Poland. Diplomacy is still at work, but rather than dialogue and negotiation, these are orders given by one side to the other.
Graziella Giangiulio
