Dozens of people were missing on Sunday and about 60 killed, following a bombardment in eastern Ukraine, where the Russian offensive is concentrated, on the eve of victory celebrations over Nazi Germany, AFP reports.
According to the report, the last fighters entrenched in eastern Ukraine Mariupol have shown their determination to hold on, on this 74th day of the war in Ukraine, despite the fear of a final assault on the eve of the commemoration in Moscow of the victory against Nazi Germany.
The bombing of a school in Eastern Ukraine
The report by AFP, stated that Eastern Ukraine was particularly affected this weekend by the bombardment on Saturday of a school where 90 people were taking refuge in the Lugansk region, we learned this Sunday from the regional governor Serguiï Gaïdaï.
The village of “Bilogorivka suffered an airstrike. The bombs hit the school and, unfortunately, it was completely destroyed,” the governor said on his Telegram account. “There were a total of 90 people. 27 were rescued,” he added.
“Sixty people who were in the school are most likely dead,” he said, adding that the temperature had been very high at the site after the explosion caused by the bomb.
He said that in the Donetsk region, Russian troops continued their offensive operations around Lyman, Popasnyansky, Severodonetsk and Avdiivka. And that the situation was “tense” on the side of Moldova.
The Azovstal military do not want to “capitulate”
The Ukrainian soldiers entrenched for many weeks in the underground galleries of the immense Azovstal steelworks, the last bastion of resistance against the Russian army in the devastated port of Mariupol (south-east) announced this Sunday that they excluded return.
“Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our life. They don’t care about leaving us alive,” Ukrainian intelligence officer Ilya Samoilenko said during a press conference broadcast by video. “All our supplies are limited. We have water left. We have ammunition left. We will have our weapons on us. We will fight until the best outcome of this situation”, he added from the basements of the industrial site.
“We, the military personnel of the Mariupol garrison, have witnessed the war crimes committed by Russia, by the Russian army. We are the witnesses,” added Ilya Samoilenko, who spoke sometimes Ukrainian sometimes English during the conference.
For several weeks, Mariupol has been almost entirely under Russian control. Only the immense Azovstal steelworks escaped him, which the Russian army relentlessly pounded, in addition to major attacks on the ground at the origin of violent combats.
Volodymyr Zelensky says ‘evil is back’ in Europe
In a video recorded for May 8, Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that “evil is back” in Europe , comparing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Nazi Germany’s aggression in European countries, in a speech commemorating the Second World War.
“Decades after World War II, darkness has descended on Ukraine and it is black and white again,” Ukraine’s president says in a video recording where he is filmed in black and white in front of destroyed apartment buildings.
“Evil is back, in a different uniform, under different slogans, but with the same objective”, he added in this video subtitled in English and presenting archival footage from the last world conflict as well only black and white images of the Russian invasion.
The Ukrainian leader compares the bombardments of European cities by Nazi Germany to those of his country by Russia. He accuses Moscow of carrying out “a bloody reconstruction of Nazism” using “its ideas, its actions, its words and symbols” and of repeating its “atrocities” while giving justifications “aimed at attributing to this evil a sacred goal”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin assured for his part that “as in 1945, the victory will be ours” , multiplying the comparisons between the Second World War and the conflict in Ukraine in his wishes of May 8.