Update on the situation in Ukraine
According to the latest update from historian and former soldier Michel Goya, published on Sunday, Russian General Roudskoy, deputy chief of the Defense Staff, this weekend prepared a situation report after a month of fighting, ensuring that, according to Moscow, the first phase of the war was a success, with the destruction of a large part of the Ukrainian army, and that the Russian army and its allies would concentrate on the complete conquest of the two provinces of Donbass. The general accompanied his comments with an estimate of the Ukrainian material losses according to Russia, figures that could not be verified: the Ukrainian army would thus have lost “Three quarters of its aircraft, 35 of its 36 TB2 drones, more than 80% of its anti-aircraft assets (S300-Buk M1)”. “In hollow, [la Russie admet] that the Ukrainian Air Force is still active and probably still is [aussi] his fleet of drones, analyzes Michel Goya.
BEE Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, the mayor said on Monday that the city, which had been besieged by Russian forces for several weeks, was on the brink of humanitarian disaster and must be completely evacuated. According to Vadym Boitchenko, more than 2,000 civilians have been killed and about 160,000 civilians are trapped in Mariupol, without electricity.
The fighting continues, but the noose seemed to loosen around certain besieged cities, such as Mykolaiv, a city lock on the road to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port, stormed for days by Russian artillery. In fact, the front has withdrawn significantly, with a Ukrainian counter-offensive on Khersonabout 80 km to the southeast, the only major city that the Russian military claims to have completely captured since the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
In this part of the country, Russian forces are still in a defensive position/austerity and reconstruction, Michel Goya specifies. Russian attacks are rather limited to the Chernihiv area. Ukrainian troops continue their pressure west of Kyiv, between Ivankiv, Dymer, Irpin-Myla and Kalymiv.
However, new fires have broken out in the area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian troops, according to Ukrainian authorities, who have requested the “demilitarization” of the sector under the auspices of the United Nations. According to Ukrainian regional authorities, the Russian army took control of the city of Slavutych, home to Chernobyl nuclear power plant personnel, briefly arresting the mayor and sparking pro-Ukrainian demonstrations.
General Roudskoy’s statement may also formalize that there will be no Russian-Belarusian operation in western Ukraine, Michel Goya further analyzes.
