Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy changed his Russian overnight video address to urge Russian troops not to fight in Ukraine, saying even their generals expected thousands to die. He said Russia was recruiting new troops “with little motivation and little combat experience” for the units that were fired during the first weeks of the war, so that these units could be thrown back into battle. He said Russian commanders were fully aware that thousands of them would die and thousands more would be injured in the coming weeks. “Russian commanders lie to their soldiers when they are told that they can expect to be held seriously responsible for their refusal to fight and then also do not tell them, for example, that the Russian army is preparing additional refrigerated trucks to store σορών. “They are not being told about the new losses that the generals are expecting,” Zelenski said late Saturday. “Every Russian soldier can still save his life. It is better to survive in Russia than to be lost in our land,” he said. ——
KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
– The Ukrainians demand the rescue of Mariupol. Russian advance is creeping up – The wives of the defenders of Mariupol call for the removal of the soldiers from the final detention – Angelina Jolie makes a surprise visit to Ukraine, meets children —— OTHER DEVELOPMENTS: STOCKHOLM – Sweden says a Russian military plane has violated Swedish airspace. The incident happened late Friday in the Baltic Sea off the island of Bornholm. In a statement on Saturday, the Swedish Armed Forces said a Russian AN-30 helicopter had flown into Swedish airspace and entered shortly before leaving the area. The Swedish Air Force made fighter jets that photographed the Russian plane. Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told Swedish public radio that the breach was “unacceptable” and “unprofessional”. In a similar incident in early March, four Russian warplanes violated Swedish airspace over the Baltic Sea. Sweden and neighboring Finland are considering joining NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has warned that such a move would have consequences, without giving details. —— LONDON – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson discussed the progress of a UN effort to evacuate people from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and “offered continued UK financial and humanitarian support” during talks with Prime Minister Barack Obama on Saturday. Zelensky. “The prime minister has reiterated that he is more committed than ever to strengthening Ukraine and securing the failure of (Russian President Vladimir Putin) Putin, noting how hard the Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom,” the Downing Street office said in a statement. “It reaffirmed that the United Kingdom will continue to provide additional military assistance to provide the Ukrainians with the equipment they needed to defend themselves,” the statement said. The United Nations is trying to mediate the evacuation in the port city where about 100,000 civilians remain. As many as 1,000 civilians live under a Soviet-era steel plant in Mariupol, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukraine has not said how many fighters are also in the plant, but the Russians are raising the number to about 2,000. —— A Russian rocket attack has destroyed an airport runway in Odessa, Ukraine’s third largest city and a major Black Sea port, the Ukrainian military said on Saturday. In a post on the Telegram, the Operational Administration of Southern Ukraine said that there was no case of using the Odessa corridor as a result of the rocket attack. Local authorities urged residents to take refuge in their positions, as the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing army sources, reported that “many” explosions were heard in Odessa. The governor of Odessa said the rocket was fired from Russian-occupied Crimea. Maksym Marchenko said there were no reports of injuries. Russian forces have launched a major military operation to occupy large parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, the industrial heart of the country, and to occupy the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. —— KYIV, Ukraine – Ukraine’s national grid operator says it has restored a “reliable” power supply to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone around the site of the 1986 nuclear reactor disaster. “In the afternoon, the last necessary 330 kV power transmission line was put into operation,” state-owned Ukrenergo wrote in a Telegram post on Saturday. According to the same post, Ukrenergo also restored another 330 kV line in the northern part of Kiev last night, helping to stabilize energy supply in the capital. He said that the reconstruction of further transmission lines in and around Kyiv remains in progress. —— KIEV – The mayor of the city of Popasna in eastern Ukraine said in a video interview that two buses heading to the city to evacuate residents came under fire and that contact with drivers had been lost. “Yesterday we evacuated 31 people from Popasna. Many more were waiting; that is why we sent two more buses to the evacuation point,” said Mayor Mykola Khanatov in an interview with the Telegram channel of Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian governor of eastern Luchsk. “We know that (the buses) arrived in the city and then came under fire from an enemy sabotage and reconnaissance team,” Khanatov said. “There is no contact with people who were inside the vehicles and organized the evacuation.” Russian forces have launched a major military operation to occupy key parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, the industrial heart of the country. —— KIEV, Ukraine – Another mass grave was found in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, where mass executions of civilians were allegedly carried out before being recaptured by Ukrainian forces in early March, the head of Kiev’s regional police force said on Saturday. “On April 29, a pit with the bodies of three men was found in the Bucha area,” Regional Police Chief Andriy Nebytov wrote on Facebook. “The victims were tortured for a long time. Bullet wounds were found on the ends of their bodies. In the end, each of the men was shot in the ear.” “This is another mass burial by the occupiers in the Buca area, the long-suffering district where more than a thousand civilians have been killed and tortured,” Nebitov added. According to Nebytov’s post, the burial site was found in the forest near the village of Myrotske, 10 kilometers (6 miles) northwest of the city of Bucha. Nebitov said the three bodies were sent for forensic examination, following a preliminary inspection by the Kiev regional police. —— KIEV, Ukraine – Seven Ukrainian soldiers and seven civilians have been released following an exchange of detainees with Russia on Saturday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Verestsuk said on social media. “We are bringing home 14 of our people: seven military and seven civilians,” Verestsuk wrote on Facebook and the Telegram. “For me, this exchange is special: one of the female soldiers is five months pregnant.” As of Saturday afternoon, the exchange had not been confirmed by official Russian sources. —— NEW YORK – Prices for Russian credit default swaps – insurance policies that protect an investor from default – plunged overnight after Moscow used its precious foreign exchange reserves to make last-minute debt repayments on Friday. . The cost of a five-year credit default swap for Russian debt was $ 5.84 million to protect $ 10 million in debt. That price was almost half of Thursday’s price, which with about $ 11 million for $ 10 million in debt protection was a message that investors were confident of a Russian bankruptcy. Despite the dip in the insurance policy, investors remain largely convinced that Russia will eventually default on its debts for the first time since 1917. The major rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s said Russia was in a “selective default” and earlier this week, the governing body for CDS contracts declared Russia defaulting. —— Ukraine evacuated more people Saturday in the eastern city of Lyman, in the Donetsk region, where at least half of the population has fled Russian bombing since the start of the war. About 20 elderly people boarded a minivan in the sound of artillery fire and explosions from a distance. All the shops in the almost empty city were closed and those who decided to stay relied on the help distributed by groups including the Ukrainian Red Cross. Those who remain say they are either too old, or do not know where to go or do not want to leave their homes unattended. They seek refuge in their basements whenever the bombing begins. Meanwhile, in Dobropillya, further west, Russian bombardment hit the city on Saturday, damaging buildings and slightly injuring seven people, including three children, according to authorities. Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister says Russian forces are occupying huge quantities of grain in the territory they occupy, while its president says the war-torn country is running out of fuel. “Today, there is confirmed evidence that several hundred thousand tons of grain have been removed from the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions in total,” Minister Taras Vysotsky told Ukrainian television on Saturday. Ukraine is one of the largest producers of grain in the world and the Russian invasion has reduced exports, pushing up world grain prices and raising concerns about severe grain shortages in importing countries. Ukraine is also facing fuel shortages as Russia destroys its fuel infrastructure and closes its ports, Ukraine …
