Ukraine reports fierce fighting as Russia marks Soviet WW2 victory
PUTIN LEADS CELEBRATIONS of Soviet victory in WW2; Russian forces storm Azovstal steel works, say Ukrainians
You are fighting for the Motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of World War Two. So that there is no place in the world for executioners, punishers and Nazis.”
Vladimir Putin
Russian President
It is very possible that Ukraine will break the Russian army to the extent that they either have to go back to pre-february or they have to effectively fold in on itself.”
Ben Wallace
British Defence Secretary
Russian forces stormed the Azovstalsteelplant in Ukraine’s strategic port of Mariupol on Monday and stepped up missile strikes elsewhere, Ukrainian officials said, as President Vladimir Putin oversaw a parade of military firepower in Moscow.
Putin marked the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II by telling his armed forces they were fighting for their country. But he did not say how much longer their assault on Ukraine, now in its 11th week, would last or how it would end.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his own Victory Day address, said his country would triumph over Russian forces. “On the Day of Victory over Nazism, we are fighting for a new victory. The road to it is difficult, but we have no doubt that we will win,” he said in a video address to mark the deaths of more than eight million Ukrainians in World War II.
Ukrainian officials said heavy fighting was underway in the country’s east, while four high-precision Onyx missiles fired from the Russian-controlled Crimea peninsula had struck the Odesa area
in southwestern Ukraine. The governor of Mykolaiv, also in the southwest, said overnight strikes were very heavy. Azovstal, a vast complex of buildings and underground tunnels, is the last holdout for Ukrainian troops in Mariupol,
whose capture would help link Russian-seized areas in southern and eastern Ukraine and cut Ukraine off from the Azov Sea.
Just before the troops and tanks paraded in Moscow’s Red Square, Russian satellite television menus
were altered to show viewers in the Russian capital messages condemning the war in Ukraine. “The TV and the authorities are lying. No to war,” screenshots obtained by Reuters showed before they disappeared. Ukraine’s Deputy Defence
Minister Hanna Malyar said Russian forces were now trying to advance in eastern Ukraine, where the situation was “difficult”, but had moved back from the city of Kharkiv, where a local official reported heavy Russian shelling.
Kyiv has called for the UN Human Rights Council to hold a special session to review the “continuously deteriorating” situation across Ukraine, including reports of mass casualties in Mariupol, a letter showed on Monday.
Three more civilians were killed in Kharkiv and three in the Luhansk region, its governor Serhiy Gaidai said. It was not immediately possible to verify the reports. “Today we do not know what to expect from the enemy, what terrible thing they might do, so please go out onto the street as little as possible, stay in the shelters,” he said on Monday.
Putin said Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine was a purely defensive and unavoidable measure against plans for a Natobacked invasion of lands he said were historically Russia’s, including Crimea. “Nato countries were not going to attack Russia. Ukraine did not plan to attack Crimea,” Ukrainian senior presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said after Putin’s comments. — reuters
Today we celebrate Victory Day over Nazism. We are proud of our ancestors who together with other nations… defeated Nazism. And we will not allow anyone to annex this victory.” Volodymyr Zelensky
Ukrainian President
We will be there to rebuild Ukraine as Europeans, for always.” Emmanuel Macron
French President