The Ministry of Defense in Moscow said in its daily update on Friday that two “high-precision air-based long-range weapons” destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom rocket and space company in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday night. Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Friday a body had been pulled from the rubble of a 25-storey apartment building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district after the strike, which Guterres spokesman described as “shocking”. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, a US-funded media outlet, said one of its executives, journalist and producer Vera Gyrych, had died “as a result of a Russian rocket hitting the house where she lived” in one of the strikes. during Visit Guterres. The rocket attack, which came a day after Guterres’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and shortly after his talks with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, drew international criticism and a furious response from Kyiv. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov on Friday described the strikes – denounced by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba as an “abominable act of barbarism” – as “an attack on the Secretary-General’s security and on world security”. Lord Malloch-Brown, the former UN Under-Secretary-General, said the international community “will recognize that it cannot deal with the UN Secretary-General in this disrespectful, occasional and frankly dangerous way by Putin.” Zelensky said last night that the attack “says a lot about Russia’s true attitude towards world institutions, about the Russian leadership’s efforts to humiliate the UN and everything that the organization represents.” It requires a strong response. “ A day after US President Joe Biden called on Congress to send up to $ 33 billion to help Kyiv, Ukraine said it had suffered heavy losses as Moscow forces, having failed to occupy the capital, doubled their efforts. to occupy the eastern part of Donbass. But he said the losses to the invading army were even worse. “We have serious losses, but the losses of the Russians are much greater. They have colossal losses,” an adviser to Ukrainian President Oleksiy Arestovich said on Friday. The British Ministry of Defense on Friday supported this assessment, saying that Donbass remains the strategic focus of Russia, but due to the strong Ukrainian resistance, “Russian territorial gains have been limited and have been achieved at a significant cost to Russian forces.” Zelinsky’s office said Russia was pounding the entire front line in Donetsk, one of Donbas’s two provinces, with rockets, artillery, mortar bombs and aircraft, while Ukraine’s general staff said Russia was bombing positions along the contact line. The governor of the eastern city of Kharkiv, Oleg Shinegubov, said on Friday that five civilians had been killed in what he described as a near-continuous bombardment on Thursday, with more than 2,000 buildings damaged or destroyed since the Russian-led invasion on February 24. . Zelensky’s office also said an operation was planned on Friday to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, the southeastern port city that was the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting and worst humanitarian disaster of the war. “An operation to evacuate civilians from the Azovstal plant is scheduled for today,” it said in a statement. The extensive steel plant is the site of the last stop of Ukrainian troops in the besieged city, but it also houses hundreds of civilians. Russia said last week it had taken full control of Mariupol except for the vast industrial area. Guterres said on Thursday that the UN was doing “everything possible” to ensure the evacuation of civilians from the “revelation” in Mariupol, and Osnat Lubrani, the UN envoy to Ukraine, said Friday that he was traveling to nearby Zaporizhia to prepare for a “hopeful” bowel movement. The British government said on Friday it had sent experts to assist Ukraine in gathering evidence and prosecuting war crimes, with a team due to arrive in Poland in early May to investigate what UK Secretary of State Liz True , called Russian “barbarism… and miserable atrocities”. , including against women “. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am The bodies of 1,150 civilians were retrieved in the area around Kyiv after Russian troops withdrew from the area earlier this month, with 50-70% of the bodies carrying bullet wounds, Kyiv police said. Ukrainian prosecutors say they have identified 10 Russian soldiers suspected of committing war crimes – including premeditated murder, ill-treatment and other violations – in the Kiev suburb of Bucha during the siege of the city in March. The United Kingdom is also deploying about 8,000 troops, as well as 72 tanks and 120 armored vehicles, firearms, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles for exercises across Eastern Europe, defense officials said in a statement. “Europe’s security has never been more important,” said Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace, calling it “one of the greatest joint developments since the Cold War.”
