The Russo-Ukrainian War: What We Know on Day 68 of the Invasion | Russia

Some of the first evacuees from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol He is scheduled to arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhia on Monday This morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. on Sunday About 100 civilians have been evacuated From the factory, the last stronghold of Ukrainian troops in the city. Zelensky said he hoped “all necessary conditions” would be met to allow the eviction to continue on Monday.

US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, He became the highest-ranking US official to visit Ukraine Since the outbreak of the war, where she met President Zelensky. At a press conference afterward, Pelosi said the United States would not be bullied. “If they’re making threats, you can’t hold back,” she said. Pelosi was awarded the Order of Princess Olga by Zelensky.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied that Russia is demanding Zelensky’s “surrender” as a condition for peace, or that Russia will try to declare victory in Ukraine by May 9. “The pace of the operation in Ukraine depends, first of all, on the need to minimize any risks to the Russian civilian and military population,” he told Italy’s Mediaset radio.

Recent Russian strikes, including on granaries and residential quarters, “provide once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of annihilation for the Russian army,” “What is Russia’s strategic success in this war?” Zelensky said in his Sunday evening address. Destroyed lives, burned or stolen property will give nothing to Russia.

German Chancellor Olaf Schulz has vowed to continue supporting Ukraine with money, aid and weapons, saying a peaceful approach to war is “obsolete”. His remarks at the May Day rally in Dusseldorf were an implicit rebuke to a group of intellectuals, lawyers and innovators who condemned Russia’s war of aggression in an open letter, but urged Schulz not to send heavy weapons to Ukraine. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz Travel to Kyiv is reportedly scheduled for Monday.

Pope Francis described the war in Ukraine as “a horrific decline of mankind” that makes him “suffer and weep,” he said in a Sunday noon speech in St Peter’s Square. “My thoughts go straight to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been brutally bombed and destroyed,” he said of the Russian-controlled southeastern port city, named after the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The governor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv urged people not to leave shelters on Sunday due to the intense bombing. Spread on Telegram“In connection with the massive bombing, we urge residents of the northern and eastern regions of Kharkiv, in particular Saltivka, not to leave the shelter during the day without urgency,” said Ole Sinihopov.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed an attack on an airport near Odessa on Saturday. It said its forces destroyed a runway and an airport hangar that contained weapons supplied by the United States and the European Union.

On Sunday, a fire broke out at a site of the Russian Defense Ministry in BelgorodNear the border with Ukraine, the region’s governor said, one person was injured. “On the borders of three municipalities – Borisov, Belgorod and the Yakovlevsky metropolitan district – a fire broke out at one of the facilities of the Ministry of Defense,” the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram.

The European Union could phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year, under the latest set of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s war machine being discussed in Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said weeks ago that the EU was working on sanctions targeting Russian oil, but the main question was how and when to phase out the commodity.

Online phishing in Russia is becoming increasingly decentralized and is gaining “incredible traction” on TikTok using Misinformation aims to sow doubts about events in the world UkraineAnd An American social media researcher warned. Darren Linville, a professor at Clemson University, South Carolina, who has been studying Kremlin-related relationships Internet The Research Agency (IRA), which has been working on the Troll farm since 2017, said it has succeeded in creating more posts that look genuine.